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BBBC Reads Ward - Arc 15.6 - 15.z - Dying
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This story isn’t intended for young or sensitive readers. Readers who are on the lookout for trigger warnings are advised to give Worm a pass. Complete list of potential triggers: here
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The Brockton Bay Book Club discusses J.C. McCrae's Ward live! The gang reads a portion of Ward and comes together to share our thoughts with each other and anyone who want's to participate.
This week we cover Arc 15.6 - 15.z - Dying
Read along here
Play along with this week's BBBC BINGO while you listen!
Support us and connect with us @brocktonbaybc
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Transcript
Introduction and Host Setup
00:00:00
Speaker
e Welcome, Mega tonight on the Brockton Bay Book Club. People are blowing up, letters are being spelled out, and creepy crawlies galore.
00:00:20
Speaker
Some gore and more. on this episode of the Brockton Bay Book Club. i am your host, Alan, joined by Hannah.
00:00:32
Speaker
Hello. Jacob. Hello. Michael. Hello. And Nick, who is currently away, but will return shortly. Hello there.
00:00:46
Speaker
yeah do out our quick Do our best Nick impressions. um ah Jacob, go. No, um teacher secretly is cool. Hannah.
00:01:02
Speaker
um And that's why Empire 88 is the best here best best team in the whole Michael, do you have one? Oh, no. Just the hello there. He always does the hello there. yeah yeah I was going to go with the... um like Guys, guys, i don't... It's not that I like him It's just that I really enjoy his metal bending powers.
00:01:29
Speaker
course. Exactly. exactly yeah The fact that he likes to be hot is completely beside the point. Oh, Nick, you're here! i'm i'm back. Hello. Oh, my goodness. Goodness. I don't have goodness i oh i don't have my Headphones plugged into my microphone. i I must be wearing my wireless earbud this evening. That's crazy. oh I got to hear everything. oh yeah was Alan. It was all Alan. It was all Alan's idea. Alan's the host. Everything's on Alan. Alan, Alan, Alan.
00:02:06
Speaker
See, what you couldn't see, Nick, is what the fans requested, but then Michael deleted it yeah actually in chat so because you couldn't you didn't have your wireless ah Google lenses on.
00:02:17
Speaker
You couldn't see the the YouTube chat and the side. um They were asking for it, so they got it. Nick, do you have an impression of yourself? Well, you took my hello there, which has become my thing. Ah, I nailed it.
00:02:33
Speaker
i was good That was good. so That was that was good. um all All I got to say is, once again, his teacher and his Dr. Robotnik-looking ass, because that's all I think he looks like, so that's my visual image of him. But he's also, he's the guy from Breaking Bad. You know the other scientist who... but Yeah. yeah yeah all your Clickety clacketing in the background. It's because bird is losing her ever loving mind with the clicky clacky toys.
00:03:02
Speaker
She's like but around the balls, go around and circle. So she's just noodling right now. Thank you, Fran. I'm glad to be back from the shard dimension. Bloodier than ever. Yes.
00:03:15
Speaker
and All right.
Teacher Compound Raid: Initial Thoughts
00:03:16
Speaker
ah Well, with all all of that out of the way, we'll Welcome to the Brockton Bay Book Club as we read through J.C. McRae, a.k.a. Wildbo's parahuman story board.
00:03:32
Speaker
um I can't imagine this is your first time here, but if it is, ah we are just a book club going chapter by chapter, arc by arc through this. Tonight's arc, the back half of arc 15, I believe this is 15.6 to the end.
00:03:50
Speaker
the end So, let's just do some initial thoughts for the back half of the teacher compound raid.
00:04:01
Speaker
Nick, what are your thoughts? Well, um
00:04:09
Speaker
one moment, I have to find something. So,
00:04:15
Speaker
i was thinking through what, you know, all the titles of the Ark, of course, have to go with ah light and this is called dying. And so i my assumption is that it is a reference to the poem by Dylan Thomas. Do not go gentle into that good night.
00:04:34
Speaker
Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And ah this was a heavy hitter in terms of the emotional damage.
00:04:50
Speaker
Um, but also a heavy hitter for me in terms of interest and writing. Um, there are a couple of fight scenes where I, again, the geography of where they are happening and what exactly is happening can be a bit tricky.
00:05:09
Speaker
However, there's a lot that happens. i really like what happened, even if it also makes me upset at the same time. um, And yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm into, this is, this is like Leviathan in the like, oh, this is the moment I'm into it. Like, I feel like this is where I'm like, okay, I'm, I'm in this now. Like I need to finish this and see what happens.
00:05:33
Speaker
So.
00:05:36
Speaker
All right. Hannah.
Interlude vs Victoria Chapters
00:05:40
Speaker
I have to disagree. ah I liked our Victoria chapters. um like I had a really hard time engaging with the interlude chapters.
00:05:51
Speaker
um You guys know I'm a crier. I'm a big crier. i didn't cry once. Didn't even feel a tingle of a tear. I just, i i I feel like the emotional impact was lost a lot. And honestly, because each interlude even jumps between people, it was hard for me to feel like I could engage in the story. I also did kind of speed read this.
00:06:12
Speaker
A really weird day to day. So I had to kind of speed read it near the end of the day. But I don't think that even if I had taken my time reading it, it would have hit. Yeah. Honestly, it was kind of a disappointing back couple of chapters for me.
00:06:28
Speaker
I liked the first half of this arc a lot better. um But yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah it's it was fine. Yeah, for sure. I do have the advantage of having read and listened to it twice, actually. so oh Twice? Yeah.
00:06:44
Speaker
Yeah, i I read it early last week and then just was listening to it periodically throughout this week, too. so Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah. I think i'm ah yeah i'm I'm kind of firmly in the middle of you two, I think, this week. um It's funny you mentioned Leviathan. To me, this was immediate I was just drawing comparisons to the Behemoth fight in Wyrm, both in placement-ish of the story and then and in in similar ah similar scope and emotional impact. Kind of felt kind of similar.
00:07:15
Speaker
um But I do put it... far beneath that fight for me it just uh it just didn't have it's he's he's done this a few times and in ward and i i don't know quite his reasoning i it's really it's an interesting choice but he uh he being wadbo obviously um it puts a lot of big moments in the eyes of interlude characters which uh is is odd to me. i think I think especially some of the stuff towards the end, which we'll get into being through the eyes of of characters who don't have an emotional attachment to what's happening, is an interesting choice given that the story is primarily first-person POV from a single character.
00:08:03
Speaker
Um, so I think some of that dilutes the impact of, of some of those moments. Um, that being said, I did, I did really like a lot of the fights, the fight scene here. Really, really,
00:08:15
Speaker
ah Great climactic battles, really fun combat. um build it We've been building up to this fight for a while. um Yeah, it's it's great to be kind of back into the cauldron, you know, alleys and things like that is kind of fun and lots of different powers and combat combatants and stuff like that.
00:08:35
Speaker
I think it's crazy that we built up to this moment. For so long. And this entire time, like we've all kind of shared that like a teacher as ah as a big threat just hasn't really, we haven't had the weight of that. And yet here we go.
00:08:49
Speaker
We get the big climactic fight. We get all of his, everything that comes to fruition. And then he just kind of gets away at the end. It was just was was really unsatisfying at the very end.
00:09:03
Speaker
um yeah And that is true, I guess, you know to to comment on that. and When I say it reminds me of Leviathan, not in the sense of like, it was as good for me, but more just in the sense of, okay, this grabbed my attention and I'm curious to see how the story resolves. Oh, i was yeah i was very I was very glued to every page, kind of as as I was reading it.
00:09:23
Speaker
um Yeah, which ah we talked, I think that's one of his strengths, kind of just writing action and and combat is very, very gripping. um the jumping around, the the powers, all that kind of stuff. Certain people meeting their their ends finally. very sad there were there as As much as I wasn't totally satisfied, there were some really satisfying moments, which we'll get to. so yeah um yeah up Up and down. ah i'm I'm excited to hopefully move past Teacher now. and ah and one can only hope. See where we go from here. yeah For the back you know fourth of ah of the story.
00:09:58
Speaker
yeah um i'm What? Oh my god. I think I have no scope of where we are in this book. like When you're reading a physical book, you can be like, oh yeah, I can see where I am in this book. I'm like, I have no frame of reference for where we are. i don't i don't know. The index means nothing to me now.
00:10:19
Speaker
Fair enough.
Narrative Build-up and Tension
00:10:21
Speaker
I'm... I hard disagree on all the combat. I... I had to go back and look at the chapters again just to make sure while you were talking about them because it sounded exciting from what you said.
00:10:34
Speaker
and um no, they were boring as hell. um The best thing that came out of this was Contessa fighting off the custodian and maybe Swansaw dragging herself around by her bloody shotgun stump.
00:10:49
Speaker
But like...
00:10:53
Speaker
It's just so boring. For me, think... for me i think there' For whatever reason, a lot of this was really easy for me to visualize. or like I could put it in the framework of something else I understood, right?
00:11:07
Speaker
So yeah, the swan song fight with Spawner was super cool. The Contessa stuff was super cool. um Yeah, so at least for me, I was able to put some of that mental somehow mentally into context, and I thought it was cool.
00:11:20
Speaker
yeah Even though I could picture this, you know, which like we've described is is hard to do with Wild Bowie. He's not great geographically with how his fights and writing happens sometimes.
00:11:35
Speaker
um Like it didn't matter in this case. I think i have a pretty good idea of how Contessa was in the hallway and how Swan Song was up on the balcony and then fell down. And then there's like a tunnel down there. And like, i it just, it, it's, it's the end of the chapter. It's the end of this fight. And it comes to such on almost every level and anticlimactic conclusion.
00:12:01
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, and i think I think to one point that Hannah pointed out, which is like, we don't spend enough time in any of the interludes to care about any of these people.
00:12:16
Speaker
So like, I kind of like Anjanu's point of view. It's a little bit fun. We're just not there long enough. Spawner, a little bit interesting for a second. I could not give two shits about Spawner. But we're just... Not a single...
00:12:34
Speaker
Yeah, and we're just, like, there's no reason to either. Like, we meet him, he dies. That's the entire, like, yeah exposure to him.
00:12:45
Speaker
ah Like, he does have some cool moments, and so, like, in terms of as a character you know that you interact with for a second but like as a character that you're getting the perspective of i don't care um just and that's probably because it's not an arc from his perspective we don't get enough time learning about him or you know an origin or a flashback or something um that That fight definitely could have been from Swan Song's perspective. and I would have loved it if it had been from Swan Song's perspective. I think visually the fight would work well. like Worked well in my mind visually. It's it's a great like anime last stand 1v1 battle.
00:13:30
Speaker
um But yeah. i In terms of the emotional impact of the fight. I definitely think oh yeah ah her perspective would have been a lot better.
00:13:41
Speaker
I can agree with that. i so say I have a lot of thoughts about that, so we'll get into it when we get to there. But yeah, overall, anticlimactic. i'm I was hoping new stuff come back. There's a lot of things that I'm told that I'm like, that sounds super cool, but there's not a lot of super cool stuff that actually happens. so um like Like there's interesting things that happen.
00:14:06
Speaker
Stuff that you could even say was cool, But none of it's like great. None of it's behemoth or leviathan or almost any of the fights from worm.
00:14:20
Speaker
um I'm trying to think of a worm fight that was worse than this. And I can't think of one. um So ah ah let's get into this. ah Nick.
00:14:38
Speaker
Yeah. i'm I'm trying to think of one now. And the only thing that remotely comes to mind is not the actual fight, but the audio book experience of trying to listen to the Bakuda fight was pretty rough. ah Rain, Rain tried really hard to give Bakuda a cool voice over effect. And, uh,
00:14:56
Speaker
Oh, that's right. it It didn't hit. It didn't hit. It was not. learn. We move on. like you get This is totally unrelated, but you guys remember the original trailer for The Dark Knight Rises where nobody could understand a word Bane said? Yes. The best. Because someone's aching into a mind. Yeah, exactly. yeah It's just like you're trying to order fries at Wendy's.
00:15:24
Speaker
so yeah there go You're like, i don't. yeah remember there's Some good old Homestar Runner. Sever your leg, please, sir. It's the greatest day. Did you just ask me to sever my leg?
00:15:40
Speaker
We are aging ourselves, but that was great reference. Alright. Arc 15 Dying Part starting with
00:15:51
Speaker
The group stops to recuperate and intuit the warden's battle strategy against Teacher. Kinsey gives the group a look at other battles in the compound. Cusodian attacks and Contessa is found.
00:16:04
Speaker
So this is what I read. I don't know if anybody remembers, but two weeks ago when we met and I was like, oh, there's something big that happened we didn't talk about. And it's because I read this one ahead by accident. And I was like, oh, check out to got yeah, yeah. Contessa, because that was such a great cliffhanger. Like I was thinking like, oh, man, Alan really picked right. Like that was a great way to end with Contessa being found.
00:16:28
Speaker
That's hilarious. yeah. so yeah Yeah. um There's a lot of talking in here that I don't honestly remember that much. I know they talk a little bit about the battle strategy. Yeah. um And how, like, they were trying to send different squads to different areas because it's kind of the mindset of, like, oh, well, if, you know...
00:16:48
Speaker
the Shepherds failed, we don't want to keep sending Shepherds there to die, so we'll send Shepherds here and maybe, you know, Faultline's crew, not that they're there, but, you know, just the first name comes to mind, um
Custodian vs Wretch Fight Dynamics
00:17:00
Speaker
can help. And I thought that was interesting, but not like...
00:17:04
Speaker
too engaging it really was like oh the custodian's fighting now this is kind of cool to see how the custodian interacts with uh victorious power oh my gosh they got contessa like what's gonna happen like that that was the the highlight of the chapter for sure i don't know that there is anything else really for me at least What was it, 15.6? I just have, like, not Anjanu and Mordnag. No! Boo! Why does he have all the cool people? i will say, though, yes.
00:17:36
Speaker
Yes to Mordnag. She never appears in anything later. She's named, and then... It's very upsetting. I was waiting for it. I love Wardnock. That was something.
00:17:50
Speaker
So when I went back and re-listened to because I'm like, there's some stuff I missed, I think, at the beginning. That was one thing that stood out to me. is I was like, Wardnock is there? She's like an S-level threat, isn't she? Why is she? is She doesn't get mentioned again.
00:18:03
Speaker
she's She's like not there. She's like stepped out for a coffee real quick. yeah huntai Yeah, basically. Oh no. That'd be a great interlude. more nu She's probably been promised 30,000 souls for the, you know, the beast. yeah You know, to quote Jurassic Park, you gotta go. I remember what her ah bone serpent's name is.
00:18:23
Speaker
Oh, it does have a cool name, doesn't it? nog i mean, she's cool. She's very cool. Um... he's very cool um
00:18:34
Speaker
yeah Watching the custodian fight is interesting, right? And seeing how it interacts with the wretch. Because it's like... you can it like highlights pieces of the wretch as the custodians hitting it, which was interesting.
00:18:47
Speaker
um Just kind of visually, I could see that being really fascinating to to if that were visualized somehow. if i If I was understanding correctly too, it was not disabling the wretch. like It wasn't a hard enough impact to to break the wretch on impact like she normally, when she's hit hard, which I thought was very interesting. It's like the custodian kind of knew...
00:19:10
Speaker
what the wretch was and was trying to get around there isnt it. was At least not all at once. Yeah, it was like, if maybe if she focused fire on one spot, it would break, but yeah, it was. Yeah, I thought it was like a delayed reaction, because it wasn't just the initial hit, it like took a while.
00:19:25
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And then i I do like the idea that the facility is built in such a way to give her weapons as she's fighting. Where she's like, oh, if I rip the panels off, I can throw down live wires. Yeah, like that.
00:19:39
Speaker
Little details like that is what visually at least I could see being very cool. Yeah, she like sprays them with the water and then like throws, rips the cord out and throws it in the water and shocks. I'm trying remember who.
00:19:52
Speaker
Scream. The Scream Lady. I love Lost. i love Lost. snapped um Or, no, wait, no, it's not Love Lost. It might be Colt, actually. It's one of them. yeah i think It is Colt, because she she goes breakers so she can get out of it, I think.
00:20:09
Speaker
Yes, that's right. If I recall correctly. yeah I mean, it's it's the hallway that I feel like is, i imagine it the same visually in my head, the same hallway that that we fought in in Wyrm.
00:20:22
Speaker
When when Sveta, when better And the gang basically broke in and we're having this big fight in the corridor, you know, in the hallway with all the jail cells. And that's it's the same. I don't know if if it's supposed to elicit the same image, but like in my head, it was the exact same. Like, it's like, oh, yes, I recognize this hallway.
00:20:47
Speaker
A bunch of jail cells in a hall? Hmm. Question from Truett. Would this have been more compelling if we had seen more of Teacher's crew doing stuff earlier?
00:21:01
Speaker
I think as a whole, like from
00:21:07
Speaker
i don't know, don't want say start to finish, like in Ward, probably like Couldn't have heard. The problem with Ward is that things are so spread out. There's so many individual pieces all over in different directions.
00:21:28
Speaker
Some are adjacent to each other, all causing fractures. um But it just it's easier to build a compelling narrative if you like build on them like in terms of leading up to this being a big bad or however you want to phrase it and the problem is there's so many lulls from one character mattering to another and you get extracted by other groups that you can't build up almost this momentum of going into a final boss battle defeating them
00:22:13
Speaker
um part of this is once again, it's the medium, but you know, there's some level of planning ahead, i would think. and we just, yeah, don't do, I guess ah as a comparison point, since worm is the best comparison point for us, when did we start getting like drip fed cauldron stuff? Cause I feel like we started getting drip fed that pretty early on. Very early. soon as we meet, uh,
00:22:39
Speaker
ah It's like as soon as we meet what's-her-face. We get Harlequin group. um Fault line.
00:22:52
Speaker
Yeah, Faultline. But I feel like it's even earlier than that, potentially. yeah Obviously, there's the Travelers is a big one. That's like Ark 3. Faultline's pretty early, right?
00:23:03
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, okay. Maybe it is. so So, I guess, and then like having interludes that are Cauldron. yeah the Gregor interlude. um yeah having interludes focused on cauldron stuff so when they get brought back up we're like okay we know who these people are they're kind of like a assault and battery in a way yep on battery yeah whereas with teacher
00:23:30
Speaker
teacher it it we don't we haven't really known what he's been up to he's he's had goons going out and gooning um But, ah you know, we haven't seen much insight into his operation.
00:23:46
Speaker
um And so I think I'd agree with Alan in the sense that, like, yeah, if it had been drip fed a bit more throughout, maybe. What if, you know, we had the one interlude, right, where he recruits a Scapegoat, who becomes a black lamb.
00:23:59
Speaker
um But I think beyond that, we don't really see much of him doing anything up until it's like, oh hey, teacher's a problem. We're going to go raid his cauldron base. We get to see he, like, attacks the major malfunctions when they do their little, you know, hideout following the pharmacist back.
00:24:18
Speaker
Yeah. um Which is a great, great fight. Love that. um we kind of get an indication of like, wow, he's got a lot of guys. Yeah, he's amassing a group.
00:24:34
Speaker
Then we have the conspiracy with the faked journal, which I wish was half of Ward, personally. like That should have been an ongoing thing from like, what, arc two?
00:24:52
Speaker
Like, that needs to be your cauldron. Why is all of this weird stuff happening? Yes. You know, why are we just trustful of people? That should have been all the way from arc two to arc, you know, now. And then you break in We have the interlude about, oh, there's a whole Severance-style office that just does this kind of psyops.
00:25:18
Speaker
And then you break it and they're like, oh my gosh, they have... They've been, like, orchestrating all of the dissent from the start. Yeah. the It's a post... Gosh. i I just feel like... i think...
00:25:33
Speaker
With Teacher, but also with like a lot of the plots, in Worm, they all feel like they bring back to something. They all lead somewhere. You have this rising sense of dread. Like if you're reading a thriller book, you have this rising sense of like, oh God, oh no. Like we are, oh boy, we're building to something. it has not felt like Ward has been building to anything. There's this in a there's this emotional weight that carries with certain decisions and certain outcomes when things happen
00:26:06
Speaker
There's no, if there's no buildup, there's no sense of like, oh, okay, we can breathe now. and And so it just feels like, oh, yes, a victory. Oh, yes, a defeat. Like, it doesn't feel weighty because we haven't built it up to be. And so like even, i mean, we'll get to it in the interludes.
00:26:25
Speaker
with my, like, two notes, but it feels like there's an emotional weight that could carry the story really well with these big hitting moments that are happening near the end of this arc, and it could be told and carried by specific people, and it is carried by the wrong people, and therefore, they drop the weight. Like, it doesn't happen at all. It doesn't... You don't feel it. And I feel like with with the whole, ah like, fake diary thing...
00:26:53
Speaker
It's such a good play. It's a really good play. But it happens so fast. The reveal, like, I guess the biggest breadcrumb for that is, oh my gosh, Jessica Yamada dipping out and basically like putting distance. So that's a pretty big breadcrumb. So when you find out like oh, it's because of this, it's like, holy holy shit, that sucks. But it doesn't fit with Jessica's style.
00:27:20
Speaker
whole personality and it feels disconnected and it's this big play but then there's no real kind of payoff it just kind of feels like everyone's like oh we should keep an eye on this but then it doesn't really seem to go anywhere because it's happening so late like it just feels like wild bow is like oh that's a fun idea and stuck it in but He's proven already that he's got such a great brain for like connecting things and tying stuff back together that I cannot believe that he didn't have some of these thoughts earlier and be like, oh, I could sprinkle this in. Because it's like... i feel like... on We're kind of talking about the whole arc, but I feel like part of it, too, is...
Showcasing Powers vs Narrative Cohesion
00:28:06
Speaker
Wild Boe, not in a negative way, so don't interpret it this way, but he wanted to flex the powers that he hadn't gotten to flesh out yet. And so, you know, we'll get to the interludes, but I think a big reason why you picked the characters he did was solely because, like, I want people to understand how cool this power is, and this is the only time i'm going to get to explain it before get got. Before they get got. so Yeah, and that makes sense too, but like it's also a sense of like if if that's if it's a cool power that you want to show off, change change it up.
00:28:43
Speaker
yeah make Make it a little bit different. Show it off in other ways that feel surprising, that that feel like a heavy hitter. where we're like Because like, oh, I'm sorry, bugs come out of your flesh? Like, that's disgusting. But like, let's do that in a way that makes me feel icky and I want to take a shower afterwards. Not like, I'm bored to tears, I cannot wait for this section to be over.
00:29:05
Speaker
Yeah. That's very dramatic, by the way. I i wasn't completely bored to tears. This was not my like least favorite arc or anything. I just... I feel like it could have been heavier, especially with what we're dealing with.
00:29:20
Speaker
And it just wasn't. I was going to say, a Fran's comment, part of the setup was him fighting Goddess for the prison. And that just makes me think, because of how quick the Goddess arc was...
00:29:33
Speaker
Yeah. it Could it have not just been them fending off teacher from the prison? Goddess never even needed to be part of the story. It felt, yeah, I guess I can see like parts parts of that where it feels like, oh, shoot, Taylor brought this the lady in blue from another world. We need to address that sometime.
00:29:53
Speaker
um so It's it's funny you say that because it does feel that like the big compelling part of teacher's power and goddess's power kind of similar, um you know, just in in the in the loyalty aspect.
00:30:08
Speaker
And what made teacher so interesting when he's introduced in worm, we get him through really through saints interlude is that realization that like all of that happens subconsciously.
00:30:19
Speaker
And so saint thought he wasn't, he was like, Oh yeah, no teacher has no control over me. I beat that guy. of course, doing his bidding the entire time. And so, like, I feel like if we had entered Ward with that framework and had not referred to teacher again, and we just had these scattered moments throughout the story where every single fight, every single thing you're kind of, you're interacting with,
00:30:43
Speaker
You're interacting with characters and like through Victoria because she's smart and she knows powers. She's constantly referencing like, you know, hey, this person is acting oddly or doing stuff out of the norm and just kind of putting that together and then reaching something like teacher.
00:30:59
Speaker
Like you're saying, you have that you have that build towards this rather than just throwing it at us without any room for imagination or speculation. Yeah.
00:31:10
Speaker
you know You know what it is? The thought that occurred to me as a comparison is that... ah it feels like the difference and it's fresh on my mind still because i just watched it recently avatar the last airbender versus cora where it kind of felt like like cora season four i think was the last season three or four whichever one the last season was four four tried really hard to tie seasons one and three together but it it felt very much like we're we're trying to pull a blanket over a bunch of stuff and kind of cover up a bunch of problems
00:31:42
Speaker
Whereas with Avatar, when everything is tied in The Last Airbender, everything is tied together at the end. It's like, oh, that was a satisfying conclusion because all of the stuff gets tied together. Sure, there's some loose threads of Zuko's mom that you could pursue in a comic book later.
00:31:56
Speaker
But the main threads, like the story fits together and it feels whole. ah Even going back to like random season one episodes, you're like, oh, you remember that one-off character? They're back and it makes sense for them to be back.
00:32:08
Speaker
Um... You know? Yeah. And so it is kind of that, like, unfortunately, it kind of feels that way, right? With, with Ward, where it's like, oh, we had the Prancer stuff in Hollow Point. Oh, now we have Goddess, and that happened. Oh, now we have Teacher.
00:32:23
Speaker
um And while it is technically all connected, it feels, maybe the connection feels a bit looser. It's not quite as yeah apparent as the connections in Worm. Yeah. Worm...
00:32:35
Speaker
when we were talking about like expectations and delivery and stuff like that, I also think about the trope of prophecy and both of them have both worm and ward habit and worm obviously has Dinah call the end of the world.
00:33:00
Speaker
And it's, you know, it's a little bit later. And there there is even a build-up to her making that announcement, even. um Like, hey, ah you know, things don't go well when this happens. And everybody's kind of like, even Coyle's like, what?
00:33:17
Speaker
That's weird. Like, okay, we'll discuss that later. And, you know talk about it later. Yeah. She makes her announcement about Jack.
00:33:27
Speaker
And it not only prompts the fight with Slaughterhouse-Nine then, but it's almost this driving force for everything moving forward with that.
00:33:40
Speaker
um And you still don't know what's going to happen with the end of the world. Like, that's still coming to fruition. And in this, we have sort of this vague prophecy of, like...
00:33:55
Speaker
Oh, everybody's... Everybody's avoiding the megacity. But there's no time stamp on it. There's no definitive, hey, when this threshold is met, this will happen. And then we walk into arc 15.
00:34:15
Speaker
So we're near the end. Yeah. And... he has numbers for that threshold. It's hovering around, you know, what, 96% or something like that.
00:34:31
Speaker
ah ah Yeah. um and and And so, like, now we're getting that reveal that, like, there's an end-of-the-world number that we know about.
00:34:42
Speaker
um Why are we learning about this now? Why is this not... not Instead of built up over here and over here and over here and over here that like, oh, there's cracks in the ice.
00:34:55
Speaker
Why aren't we just saying, hey like, here's a definitive thing. and we've and and even if it's not actually definitive, we just need to say outright that this is for sure for for the reader's sake.
00:35:15
Speaker
Because if we don't have that attachment point to something definite, we don't care. I don't care. that the be like It's a vague, like, oh, I'll keep that in mind that you know people are avoiding the city. Oh, I'll keep that in mind that this is going on, that the Simurgh's hanging out.
00:35:32
Speaker
I don't know if any of them are related or any of them even matter. You know? we We still haven't made... We still don't know for any reason...
00:35:44
Speaker
Why March did anything.
00:35:49
Speaker
Other than she was horny. For like. yeah like Dog chasing cars. As someone who's read it before. i know why. But like, there's no connection now between this and this. This is like watching 10 episodes of a murder show where somebody gets murdered in every episode. It's, you know murder she wrote for one whole season. But then for some reason, the last two or three episodes with no prompting go, and they were all connected. And you go, no they weren't.
00:36:27
Speaker
that's some That's some real bullshit retcon. like yeah You're going to go back and film over a scene where like they, you know, ah back to the future. Doctor Who nonsense. Yeah, Doctor Who nonsense. Doctor Who shit. Oh, and that's when I actually gave them the knife and I took it away. Like...
00:36:47
Speaker
ah why it's It's not great. was going to say, it's it's because there the thing is, is that like you can do anything you want as an author. Like you can do whatever the fuck you want.
00:37:03
Speaker
You can make things tie in that have no business tying into themselves. If you do it in a way that doesn't, like if it's unconvincing for your reader, then it's unconvincing.
00:37:17
Speaker
it and And that's like, if you can make these two things that are completely and utterly unrelated and make them relate, and your reader's like, my gosh, that totally makes but sense because this and then this and then this, and then they start drawing their own conclusions, then you've done it well. But if you're just like throwing it in, you're like, ah, yes, that. And you're like, what?
00:37:37
Speaker
What? No. you mean? Like, that makes no sense. And in fact, I'm frustrated and annoyed. Like, I think most... murder mystery books or or thriller books or anything that has like a big mystery that you're trying to figure out. There's always an element where the reader is going to be like, I called it. I fucking knew this was going to happen because I saw the signs way back in chapter two, blah, blah, blah, blah. blah blah blah But if you're throwing stuff in at the last minute and it feels, i don't want to say sloppy.
00:38:09
Speaker
It feels a little sloppy, but
00:38:13
Speaker
I know how to say that nicely, but yeah, it just, it doesn't, it doesn't tie together in a way that makes me feel excited about the ending. Like, in Wyrm, it was so clear that we were headed towards something big, something bigger than ourselves. And like, the Endbringers are already big, and they just keep getting bigger and more problematic, and then things just kept keep getting worse, and stuff ties into itself, and it's like the end of the fucking world, and it feels like this peak, climactic,
00:38:45
Speaker
oh my gosh moment. And with this, like, I truly have no idea what we're leading up to. What are we, I guess we're leading up to another, the world is ending, I guess. but Like, it doesn't feel like it. Like, I'm still waiting for the machine army to show up. Like, I keep thinking that that's going to be the big ending, which I doubt it's going to be. Because it can have as much relevance as anything else that's been mentioned.
00:39:09
Speaker
Right. no It doesn't, there's no, ugh. It got a full interlude. got a full interlude. Yeah. me Yeah. um Yeah.
00:39:22
Speaker
yeah There's a just last thing I was thinking about is when you're building a through line, especially for like delivering on a, we'll just call it a mystery because there is the mystery of how this is going to go down.
Theme Comparison: Ward vs Worm
00:39:33
Speaker
You want your landing point and the path there to both
00:39:41
Speaker
make sense on a mechanical level. I've put the pieces in place for this room, you know, this machine to make sense. The concept of when you watch a murder mystery show, can the audience, if they were paying attention, figure out who it was? Or is this just a magic?
00:40:01
Speaker
The detective knows and they're not telling anybody because of something they saw that the viewer could not see. there's It's impossible for the viewer to actually understand it. Or, and or, can you thematically figure this out?
00:40:19
Speaker
um Spoilers for, ah I forget what murder mystery book Hannah and I read at one point in time for a book club. was like the shadow man or the dark man or whatever. Dark matter? the whole What? are the No, not dark matter. Uh...
00:40:34
Speaker
No, it's like the knock-knock man or the whisper man or something like that. whisper man, that's what it is. It's the man. little bit of a spoilers for that if you ever want to read. You can close your eyes and close your ears and your heart. what i back Yeah, close your eyes.
00:40:48
Speaker
People on podcasts like... The theming of the whole thing is fathers. The whole book is about fathers and sons. And yeah like... So, even though...
00:41:01
Speaker
I didn't the like, I do think the mystery comes out of nowhere. The like, I go, well, it's got to either be the serial killer who's dead son or his dad and his dad's going to be ancient. So I'm to say it's the serial killer son who he is.
00:41:20
Speaker
I don't know. we we we've Maybe we've shown him he's like the cashier at a grocery store. And he might as well have been for how like, oh, this is who it is. And you're like, well, how are we supposed to figure that out? But thematically, it's got to be the guy's son.
00:41:35
Speaker
And in this, we we we are building to something. Thematically, we have been all over the place with themes. So the only thing that thematically for me fits in is like some great...
00:41:51
Speaker
ah loss of agency. Yes. because that's been a pretty consistent theme, but we've, like I said, we've been wibbly wobbly all over which each arc, what we're leading to.
00:42:03
Speaker
um Worm has a pretty good one, which is, what will you do to, you know, save the world? Everything leads to that. What would you be willing to do to save the world?
00:42:14
Speaker
Kind of. and And like I said, everything leads to that. You know, before the decision ever going to be made by Taylor, that that is where we are headed.
00:42:26
Speaker
that That's the question that will come up. And here, I don't know what the question is. And mechanically, i don't know what machine parts have been put together to build the end.
00:42:42
Speaker
Yeah. I think that's fair. A couple of comments from Fran. I didn't want to miss. oh Well, J-Man as well said, ah March is just vibing, bro. Just let her vibe.
00:42:52
Speaker
True. um Never. Never. ah Fran said the Machine Army really only got half of Dots Interlude, so which is fair. yeah But it it was fascinating. Clearly it's stuck in our mind, though. It's like a fascinating thing.
00:43:06
Speaker
um And then Fran also said Teacher has been way more prominent. He's just not as interesting. And I think that is part of it, too. He has been around. he yeah i don't I don't know what it is. He just hasn't... He's Bob from Accounting.
00:43:22
Speaker
I don't care about Bob from the Count. Something about it just hasn't stuck. well ah That was 15.6, but I think it was more than that, too. um yeah but we could do ah We could do a 15, 7, and 8 together, I think.
00:43:38
Speaker
That'll be the break-up for the interludes. yeah yeah These are the last two before the interludes where it breaks up into a bunch of different scenes. 15.7. so fifteen point seven Contessa fends off the custodian and makes the group choose between three outcomes for the city themselves and teacher in terms of casualties.
Contessa's Role and Strategy
00:43:59
Speaker
15.8. group makes their individual choices, but Sveta convinces them to give Contessa the decision. Contessa chooses option C, which will lead to at least two breakthrough deaths, and Valifor finally dies.
00:44:14
Speaker
Thank God. Yes. yeah well We just spent we spent some time throwing some blows, so just to put a few good things here. Oh, for sure.
00:44:25
Speaker
Valafor's death was so satisfying. um It was. Finally. And long time coming. He died like a bitch. He died like he lived.
00:44:37
Speaker
Yep. A bitch. Yep. um Yeah, exactly. And then Contessa is always a highlight. I think Wabo clearly knows how to write. like I think was probably one of his favorite little characters to write in Worm, just with how how well she was written. And I i feel at the same here.
00:44:53
Speaker
um Again, again i with everything else, I wish it was probably done a little differently. But I do appreciate the way Contessa's written. I think ah the way she navigates her power, the way she sort of lets it control things.
00:45:05
Speaker
She's like apparently had to practice turning it off and like remembering the instructions was really cool. Yeah. yeah i liked I liked how the way she beat Teacher was running a mind loop so he couldn't get in her head. Awesome. is like That's a super cool concept.
00:45:21
Speaker
But see, they're in... Sorry, not to critique again. but he's like Because there is like, oh again, the best ah the best indication we've had of Teacher's Power has been Saints Interlude, still.
00:45:33
Speaker
um And this whole time, i eventually just had to accept that Contessa had beaten Teacher like I hoped. But in the back of my mind, you're going, but did she? But did she? And I wish, because especially the way that that interlude ended where you're not sure if she won or Teacher did,
00:45:51
Speaker
um I would have liked some more... like at least for the reader to be like, alright, what's really going on here? I didn't feel like we got a lot of that. Would have been fun. yeah I'm fine. I'm happy that she won because she's the best. but yeah yeah yeah ecar So, maybe the most interesting character of this high entire arc.
00:46:10
Speaker
ah Yeah. yes probably true i mean it's It's hard for her not to be, though, right? Because she is so compelling as a character with her power. And like the way she's talking with them and is like...
00:46:21
Speaker
Oh, Zveta, get into that box right now. It's very important you do this. this Like, not explaining. I need a tool. Like, what but range a tool? And he's like, what tool? Just being like, any tool, it'll be the right one. yeah just do it. Oh, yeah. And then Im's commentary in the background. yeah like Just the veteran. Just don't understand. You just have to do what she says. Just do it. Also... Do you know how many people I work under? yeah Yeah, my favorite is when she's like, oh yeah, 100%, Katessa's gonna fix everything. She's a genie, and Katessa's like, I'm not a genie. And then she's like, so here our options, A, B, and C. She's like, what?
00:47:04
Speaker
You're making me look bad. Katessa, stop making me look bad. Oh my God. You know we go way back. It was so much fun.
00:47:16
Speaker
no I love that she told Rain to throw the tool at a precise angle. And in my mind, I'm like, yeah there's no way he can do that. But she didn't need that. She needed him to just throw it so that it ricocheted incorrectly. And also, she knows that it's not good. She just knows that if she tells him 11, he's going to throw it at 12 on accident. Exactly. Same with the, like, which tool? It doesn't matter. The one you give her is the one that she knew she was going to get.
00:47:44
Speaker
yeah exactly yeah i the were there are a couple of moments too just in the action scene where like they're talking and she just throws a piece of debris and stops two bullets with it midair like she so cool just dodging the attacks yeah from the custodian from the custodian like it' like yeah just thousands because it's all small blows But like, because it's so empathetic and it talks about just the way she's like minimal movement, but like, i imagine they're small blows. So she's just like redirecting everything, just like very minimal, like knees and elbows and yeah like shunting it off to the side.
00:48:22
Speaker
Yeah. And Kassodi has just got to be pissed. imp Imp did give us, I thought was really cool, was she gave us a hint at one of Contessa's major questions for the day is, that she asked herself, which is, yeah how how do I not, or how do I void how do i avoid master control today?
00:48:42
Speaker
Something like that. Which was like, yeah what a great question. You're like, do you think I don't ask myself that first thing I get up every morning? like Yeah. exactly Also, when she's memorized everything and and Rain's like, what do we do? She's like, I don't care. Just go and do what I told you because the more I have to answer these dumb questions, the less likely I'm to remember all of the stuff that I need to remember. Yes. yeah, yeah yeah My gosh, that's so great.
00:49:07
Speaker
the The whole thing about like surviving the custodian tearing down the facility. She's like, you guys go here. ah like Victoria, you need one dog. Like just, you know, on yeah on the third boom. See, my thing is, I don't think, yeah like I know that she would be right, but I would, if I were Victoria, every noise I'd be like, was that a blow?
00:49:29
Speaker
Did that count? I'd be overthinking everything so much. Oh my gosh. But yeah, that that whole scene was a great. um Just everything with her. We also got something I caught on the second time around, didn't on the first time. This isn't mentioned in the summaries, but Kinsey briefly takes over a bunch of cameras and we see them looking into different parts of the facility.
00:49:54
Speaker
Imp hatches a glimpse of Valkyrie's crew and she kind of has a moment where she's like, she's got some handsome guys with her.
00:50:06
Speaker
yeah And Victoria's like, she's not telling the truth, but we don't have time to press. yeah And then it becomes very apparent later who that was. Oh, who was it?
00:50:17
Speaker
ah Well, it was certainly Gru. Along with some other people. Because he's back from the cabin. they brought him triary of a setting Very I'm glad you're here, but it's very upsetting. I mean, it is it is a crew of like most interesting best of the best. It's Gru, Clockblocker, Kidwin, and Canary. I'm just like, canary what a group of characters to come back right at this moment.
00:50:46
Speaker
um Love it. So good. yeah no good Could have been way more satisfying. It could have been and but been from somebody else's perspective, but you know, that's okay. um well We'll do this. yeah give Give the the syringes to the woman in yellow.
00:51:04
Speaker
To the cape in yellow. To Valkyrie's cape in yellow. Valkyrie's cape in yellow. Who is that going to be? We don't know. is it to be some unnamed character?
00:51:15
Speaker
No, it's Canary, who we know, who we love, a fan favorite. Out of nowhere, we're not expecting it, but that's great. The prophecy gets fulfilled that we found the woman in yellow. we She does her thing, and you're like, of course, we boost her powers.
00:51:33
Speaker
She just says, hey, everybody, cut it the fuck out. And yeah basically undoes, like, over Master Strangers, everybody. like um Amazing. Yeah. ah Glorious.
00:51:46
Speaker
Love yeah that. Yeah. such like that's That's a moment of things fitting together where like, yeah, that's prophecy is fulfilled. ah Right. Yeah. felt good. It felt satisfying.
00:51:57
Speaker
yeah Yeah, that was good. yeah yeah So ah Bernard asked um which choice A, B, or C would we have chosen had we been the ones in charge? So to kind of recap the choices, yeah yeah I'll have to remember. C we know.
00:52:10
Speaker
C is minimal hero deaths, minimal civilian deaths from teacher. However, teacher escapes, which is what we end up with ah in the end is choice C. choice And two two breakthrough members are... Breakthrough members.
00:52:25
Speaker
Right, I was kind of summarizing, but yeah. Minimal, but yeah. Two breakthrough members die, one heartbroken dies, um and then... so Teacher escapes. Teacher escapes.
00:52:37
Speaker
And then um A was the... A was teacher dies. No, that's okay. I believe A was teacher is eliminated. However, heavy hero casualties, not from Breakthrough, interestingly, but I believe it was like one undersider, two heartbroken, um a bunch of hero casualties, and ah the city suffers as a result because villains take over the city.
00:53:04
Speaker
Long-term suffering. Long-term problems. it's like well that's not too bad because it's like it's bad like ah it's not not the undersider kind of villains we're talking like fallen kind of villain um b was teacher is stopped however ah hundred thousand civilians will die at minimum yeah It's like a minimal hero loss, but the city but
00:53:36
Speaker
minimal hero loss but the city gets wrecked by Teacher. Basically, they let Teacher pull the trigger, but they catch him in the end. yeah yeah um um in it and And it's all... that Everybody except for Love Loss has somebody they care about. yeah yeah yeah yeah Most importantly, Cassie.
00:53:54
Speaker
And we can't be losing the Cassie-Chassie duo. Bad bitties for life.
00:53:59
Speaker
True, true. um And then, yeah, option C, like we talked about. Every option, though, had... The only option that was good for Breakthrough was a which was clearly the worst option. Yeah.
00:54:12
Speaker
Because that was the one where, like, one person on Breakthrough will suffer long enough they might as they might wish they died. And it's like, okay, that sucks. B, I think, was... One person on breakthrough dies, one person suffers.
00:54:26
Speaker
And then C is two people on breakthrough die. If I recall them, they're not versed correctly. Most minimal casualties. think they said limited to... In the thousands as opposed to 100,000 or 40,000 plus. So like... mean... Yeah, it really does feel like...
00:54:42
Speaker
forty thousand plus so like yeah i mean see yeah it it really does feel like there wasn't an option except C. But we will say, i do want to point out, this is bringing something from the interlude, from Teacher's part at the end.
00:55:03
Speaker
Teacher, interestingly, seems like he was betting that Contessa was still thinking like Cauldron, where it was the mindset of save humanity at any cost, right? That was kind of Cauldron's mindset.
00:55:17
Speaker
um And Contessa even implies like, yeah, that was an option, but I chose not to present it as such because that's not the way I work anymore. I thought that was interesting.
00:55:28
Speaker
i just think it's worth bringing up here when they're making their choices where Victoria is thinking, is there another option? And yeah, there is option D. Let teacher do what he wants to do. yeah But that's clearly not an acceptable option to most people for a lot of good reasons.
00:55:44
Speaker
It's ah since we have brought Dinah into the equation later on bringing her back into things and I'm assuming she's doing stuff for percentage reasons um and as is teacher teachers always I mean the whole reason teacher was doing his shtick before was to prepare for the end of the world like as soon as Cauldron was done he moved it Like supposedly, um, and and I'll believe, him and for the, but, but to like have him be on top when the world ends and same here, like oh he, whatever he's preparing for, he he is trying to save humanity, but like as under his control, um,
00:56:38
Speaker
And it's interesting, going back with that and agency, and Dinah and Contessa as our characters. Dinah started out as somebody who did not have agency over...
00:56:49
Speaker
even her I mean, really, are we even her powers ah much, but you know was under Coil's control and before that, kind of her parents. And then as she moves out of that, she is able to make this prediction and whatnot, and she takes control and she charges money and like she has agency over her abilities and how she uses them, and she chooses to do the stuff.
00:57:14
Speaker
That's made very apparent from, you know, when Taylor turns herself in and they're trying to get Dinah to run numbers on her. And she's like, fuck you. I'll give you one, you know, 98% chance you fucking die like a bitch. You know, yeah that one's for free. ah um You know, she does that.
00:57:35
Speaker
So she moves from non-agency to agency over her powers and choices she makes. And on the flip side, we have Contessa, who spends her whole life from like, what, nine or 12 or something like that?
00:57:51
Speaker
Just saying, hey, tell me what to do. Like, like like i kind of to her power, but also like, I'm making these decisions at the same time. Like, my goal is to save humanity on my terms.
00:58:10
Speaker
as confusing as that is, we are going to run these, and she is secretly the person in charge. And she says, at a moment later, in a later chapter, something that I just love, which is like, I've only not... I've only let other people make, was it decisions twice or something like that?
00:58:31
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And, you know... And look where that got us. And so like now I'm done making decisions. i I'm done making the decisions for everyone, which is what she was doing for better or worse. Like she was making the decisions to save the world on behalf of the world, but by herself. And now she is at this point where she's gone completely the other way.
00:59:02
Speaker
Like, I'm done with that. Now, I'm... You asked me the questions. I'm just going to give answers. I'm i'm not going to be the one pulling the trigger. And it feels so... Like, ah everybody's pissed off at her and feels like this is a cruel... Like, for her to give these three answers and to be like, oh, you're making us, you know, pull the trigger, yada, yada, yada. And it feels like... I don't know. it's framed as this, you know...
00:59:30
Speaker
cold, mean thing, which is kind of how we've always viewed her. And then we get to her talking with teacher and it's so humanizing for me to hear her go like, no, I have the power to do what I could stop you. I could stop all of this whatnot, but I'm done being this autocratic. I make all the decisions for everybody place. I let them make the decisions for them from now on.
00:59:58
Speaker
And for me, that's a, that's a great writing from one chapter to another where you feel like she's a heartless bitch. to, no, that was a very human moment for her to yeah not just take over and make decisions for everybody, which is what she does.
01:00:17
Speaker
Oh yeah, for sure. And I think... is in the opposite. Or kind of now. She's making decisions for but people. Maybe not great. Maybe they are. Who knows? We don't know. We don't know, yeah. It's what teachers Yeah. And even even Victoria admits, right, she says like,
01:00:34
Speaker
when Sveta tells Contessa, choose, we don't want to choose, Victoria's like, but we did all choose. We did all choose, yeah. And we know what the answer is. And that is the option that Contessa went with in the end.
01:00:47
Speaker
So it's like, yes, you told Contessa to choose, but, you know, we also, you know, chose and she's kind of just going with what we would have wanted anyway, which is interesting. And I wonder if her power could intuit that, um,
01:01:03
Speaker
don't know if it could or but my assumption is that it did. Okay, I actually have a question about this. So when I was reading this part, I did not feel like Contessa was a bitch.
01:01:14
Speaker
I felt like she was being very honest and open and being like, ah you guys have to make this decision. And one of the things that she said to them was, um ah a lot of things depend on whatever, you know, this isn't, I'm, you know, boiling down to three options here, but it also depends on your decisiveness as a team.
01:01:36
Speaker
Which then very quickly turns into trust speaking for everybody and saying, we're not going to pick. I actually was was actually mad at Sveta for this. oh i i do not think she should have made like that whole thing of like, well, we're not going to pick. like First of all, love you, babe.
01:01:53
Speaker
Don't speak for the group. um Because you have a lot of trauma with her and you have a lot of history with her. And that, of course, is going to impact your decision.
01:02:06
Speaker
But, like, everybody else did make a decision. And this kind of feeling of, like, okay, well, I guess we won't say what we all picked. But we all know what we picked.
01:02:19
Speaker
And so they I think that it it's got this feeling where, like, because Sveta calls her a coward. She calls her a lot of names, actually. um But I really don't feel like she is.
Group Tensions and Decision-Making
01:02:31
Speaker
coward for not picking i feel like sveta is the coward in this moment like she is she i mean obviously she's been through a lot uh but this moment of like you don't want to have to carry that weight on your shoulders of the thought that you potentially picked something and that later down the road you're gonna have to live with the consequences of whatever that might be so like if you lose your best friend or you lose whatever like Even if it's like, oh, it was the group that picked, like, that's still in the back of your mind that, like, I did choose this. I did write this down. This was my vote.
01:03:04
Speaker
And i it I don't know. i just It really got me because I was like, i don't think... I don't think that was right. Like, I think that it's it's like this idea of like, if you have somebody who has so much power, like, like she does, like Contessa does, that like, it can't be on her, which is what kind of what you were saying, Ellen, but like, this idea that like, it has to be on other people to make those decisions that are going to impact them and the people around them. And like, if you're a hero, like Victoria says, if you're a hero, you've, you've, you know that you could die.
01:03:40
Speaker
doing this and protecting people and you put your life on the line every time you go outside and you put on your your your cape sona cape sona whatever like you're putting your life on the line to do this and they knew people were going to die and not all come back like we all knew that people weren't going to come back from this and So, like, what are you willing to sacrifice?
01:04:02
Speaker
You know? But, I don't know. i just that It really rubbed me the wrong way that Sveta was speaking for the group and, you know, calling Contessa a coward. It's like... Yeah.
01:04:15
Speaker
I don't know, babe. I wouldn't be so quick to throw that right now. It's... a o yeah oh i was just going to say I wanted to address a comment I saw. Truett said, I want to say real quick, I think...
01:04:31
Speaker
Contessa is Sveta's Amy, so I don't blame her too much, which I do get. That makes a lot of sense, yes. oh that The difference is that Contessa's cool. And that Amy's a bitch and the worst person on the planet?
01:04:48
Speaker
yeah First off, all things are possible when you're wearing a fedora like Contessa. You can write that down. Yeah. ah yeah Very true. Now, um i I get that, though. Yeah, that I do think Svecha spoke for the group out of that place of trauma in the same way that Victoria would address Amy for the group and everybody else would kind of back off and be like, this is Victoria's thing. Yeah.
01:05:13
Speaker
Yeah. And they did in that moment. They backed Svecha up. they No one was like, no, no, no, we I think we should vote. They were all like, Sounds good. Although somebody later in this chapter or arc was like, God dang, Victoria be real good if you were friends with your sister right now.
01:05:31
Speaker
Yeah. No, you're right, Hannah. like When I say that she was the contestant portrayed in a bad light, I don't mean that like she was wrong, but that like clearly like people took issue with it.
01:05:50
Speaker
Mainly Sveta. And I don't think I realized till now that like we get into another one of those like would you be friends with the undersiders conversations. I love Sveta.
01:06:02
Speaker
She's a cool character. i could not probably stand to hang around Sveta for very long. I would get very get very pissy with her.
01:06:15
Speaker
I think I'd be friends with her, but it would also be some of trauma bonding. ah But yeah, no, I agree. I think one individual who you and I both know that we'll talk about later that like... Wait, text me. is i want to know. Yeah, who is who is Sveta.
01:06:34
Speaker
And yeah, I'll text it to you. Yeah, text text me because I want to know who you're thinking of and but ten I mean, I think her and Victoria's friendship is like a really solid one that they've built they built you know through the trauma bonding, but also because they've become best friends. They've been through a lot of stuff. They've been through the worst parts of each other's lives, and they've also been on a team together, which, you know, and ah I just, I i find that that like...
01:07:07
Speaker
her Her energy, Sveta, oftentimes will come across very much as like a moral high ground that's truly... um it can come across a little stifling maybe times. Yeah.
01:07:27
Speaker
but But I do think that, like, in this moment, like, Sveta is responding out of an emotional place, which is totally valid, um especially considering that we're losing people left and right and center in the middle of a building that's crumbling in Cauldron headquarters. Like, if anyone has a reason to be...
01:07:46
Speaker
incredibly upset and lashing out, it's Sveta. Like, she has been through the ringer here. And so, I don't, like, I don't agree with her decision, but I also don't fault her for it either. Like, she's... Yeah.
01:08:01
Speaker
and And also, like, it's really easy for me to, like, sit here and and kind of judge her reaction in this moment. But also, like, I've never been in that position that I would have to make a decision that would...
01:08:15
Speaker
change the lives of hundreds of thousands of people if I decided that I voted one way or another. Like, that is a huge weight to carry, and I wouldn't want it.
01:08:27
Speaker
I would not want that weight. I would be a terrible hero. Let's be honest. I'm not built for the hero life because i I couldn't take that kind of pressure just for the decisions that you have to make like that. Jacob said something similar me once.
01:08:40
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:44
Speaker
sorry and Sorry to interrupt your flow of thought. yeah yeah No, that's okay. That triggered that memory for me. When was that? we were ah It was an Instagram thing I was sent to him that was like, if you all if your friend group all got superpowers, who'd be the most likely to turn villain?
01:09:01
Speaker
Yeah. And so that's hilarious he was like, he's like, you, me and Michael probably just average heroes. Like that's, that's where we're decent folk.
01:09:13
Speaker
Alan is going to be like Batman. He's like on his own doing his own thing. He'll link up with us sometime if it's convenient, but he's also got like three side teams he's working with. Yeah. Yeah.
01:09:25
Speaker
and iss the element yeah who is Okay, that actually brings us to the rogue element that like goes rogue at some point. goes yeahp She she plays the line. Yeah, Why is true? Come on. I didn't say boring.
01:09:42
Speaker
yeah thank you so much why am i the boring one and why is it true come on no no yeah i didn't be boring No, no, you mean you mean Jacob or a trio. We're a team. We're a squad. Okay, we're boys. You're like the Flash Superman. And I'm trying to think of, I guess, motion Man Hunter where they're like all collectively like doing the thing running the watchtower and Batman's like, where is Batman?
01:10:07
Speaker
And then you have a meeting and he just shows up and you're like, where were you been, Bruce? yeah What you been up to? You're like, nothing. You don't need to know. That's part of a secret you know set of things. If you ever go rogue, I'll take every one of you out.
01:10:22
Speaker
Basically. Now about payroll. So is Alan hunting Hannah in this scenario? What was that? Alan hunts Hannah in this scenario then if if she's the rogue and he's trying to take out the rogues.
01:10:35
Speaker
o Huntress, you can't keep killing people like that. It's wrong. Now watch me break this man's back.
01:10:43
Speaker
getting, ah what's it, The Question and ah and Huntress? Yeah. or yeah Yeah. yeah That's you guys. Anyway, I'm sorry. andrew Good side tangent. No, that's good.
01:10:55
Speaker
yeah It's still superhero adjacent. It all yeah counts. Very important. Oh, yes, Huntress. Yeah. Cool. yeah
01:11:04
Speaker
um to bring back to the end of 15.8 we get valafor's death i do always have to shout out we give we give wild bow a ton of praise for his uh handling of popular storytelling tropes um or or rather the like reconstruction of them you know as we as we call it so uh i gotta give i'll tie this in with with mom we'll bring up mom and mathers later too but This trope always bugs me, and he fell for it, so I'm a little disappointed, but it's
Valafor's Death and Narrative Tropes
01:11:36
Speaker
okay. Oh, no. But it's the it's the trope of ah you let the bad guy get away because you're the morally superior person, and then that bad guy does a bunch more harm, and then you go back to them, and you're like, well, that was a mistake, now we've got to kill you, and then you kill him.
01:11:50
Speaker
And it's like, why didn't you kill him the first time? you He did harm, so you stopped him. And then he got away and did more harm, and now you're like, well... now you You didn't fix your way. Who have seen that coming?
01:12:04
Speaker
Although, to be fair... yeah To be fair, Mama Mathers and Valiforg linking up with Teacher and Scapegoat was kind of a worst-case unforeseen scenario, because Victoria probably did think, like, he's blind.
01:12:20
Speaker
Now I've taken his jaw. Surely he's done now. Surely there's not a single healer in the rest of the universe. who What is he going to do? Dick hypnosis now? Oh, yeah. Woo!
01:12:33
Speaker
i know and but It wasn't even that. it was like the Mama Mathers was locked up in maximum security yeah and he wasn't he was he in the but i wherever the fuck he was. think They were both locked up like you. It wasn't that they like oh my god gosh we let him live. It's like they got out by fault of anybody's to be fair except for Dietrich's fucking him.
01:13:02
Speaker
Was it the prison raid? I'm to say it was the prison raid. I think it was. The prison fight with Goddess? Yeah. So, which, you know, again, small thing. that Maybe it was mentioned and we kind of missed it, but yeah. um Because there's a bunch that basically split off in different directions.
01:13:19
Speaker
but Yeah, because we noticed, right, he has his eyes back when he comes back. So it's like, okay, scapegoat. Also, just as a side note, what... What a key that he unlocked where where teacher was like, scapegoat, I can use you to transfer the downside of my power and just make everybody under me better.
01:13:41
Speaker
And I'm like, that's kind of awesome in a great way. like i mean, terrible for the heroes, of course, but like I love that application of scapegoat's power and the interaction with teacher's power. I thought that was kind of a cool note.
01:13:54
Speaker
Yeah, he makes zombies because you have to have, for every person you've made, cool with the new ability, you have to move that zombification off a little bit.
01:14:05
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Not that they're super stupid, but generally the more ability he gives them, though yeah yeah the less intelligent they are Although,
01:14:17
Speaker
So the the lower intelligence thing is interesting, but obviously the downside of being like what I'll call in love with teacher or enthralled to teacher seems to be the case. And we can get into the interlude here, but i one of the reasons I really liked the interludes, particularly the Wasp Commandos interlude, is solely because of that insight into how teacher's power affects the psyche, where...
Teacher's Manipulative Powers
01:14:43
Speaker
This is a nobody nothing commando of a tiny squad and teachers great plan. But he thinks he's the shit. He thinks teacher has given him special, the special touch, right?
01:14:56
Speaker
And i I, love that for what that implies that this is why teacher squads are so hard to fight is because they all genuinely believe their teacher's special favorite little boys and girls. Yeah.
01:15:10
Speaker
And I love that. wait to talk about them. The Wasp Commando one was so good. For that reason. Let's get into it. so We wanted to move to Wasp Commandos. Wasp Commandos. Buy all their places and toys. Wasp Commandos. os yeah In stores now. okay So 15X.
01:15:30
Speaker
but It's from Cheat Commandos. The second Homestar reference. Cheat Commandos. Buy all their places and toys. oh Alright, 15.x Interlude Various A teacher thrall leader, wasp commando, shoots Sveta before getting killed by a harbinger Misha follows Saint through the battlefield and ultimately surrenders Sveta has a consequential meeting with a harbinger and they link up with legend
01:16:02
Speaker
So, yeah, so getting to the wasftps command the was Wasp Squad, Squad Black Yellow, um I just, I love all the little things he's like, me and my boys, we all got the black yellow tattoo.
01:16:15
Speaker
Jimmy over here is going to get it two days. So-and-so's got 92% accuracy, but that's weak. That's even the worst on our team. It's so much losers. Oh, my God.
01:16:30
Speaker
look Even still, the one the one power that really I really did like, there was one really cool power. um i can't Drip feed. Drip feed. Badass power. Drip feed's power is the coolest because it is...
01:16:47
Speaker
he turns himself into a biological weapon, but it's technically a thinker power, which I love that nuance where it's like, it's not, it's not like a neuter where he just makes like different or like Gregor where they're he's making different chemicals. It's like, no, he's a thinker power telling his brain, whoa, make that toxic or, you know, like overriding. no, He tells your body. Yeah.
01:17:08
Speaker
Yeah. To make yourself toxic. Yeah, that too. Is that right? I thought he made himself toxic. No, no, no, no. It's whenever you come into contact with him, he can tell your body to basically break itself apart by, yeah like, it'll figure it out. Like, log up your veins or have a heart attack or... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You've got ooze leaking into your bill organs. Yeah.
01:17:34
Speaker
yeah That's right. Yeah. By making it work against T-cell. He can just like be like, yeah yeah, use that to... Oh, T-cells. Just start eating through the skin. you know Right. yeah yeah So there's a at-hound, porn, shutter, drip feed, and tricks.
01:17:49
Speaker
um Okay. Can we just be real for a second? These motherfucking Rainbow Six Siege-ass operatives, that's all they are. They're talking about... like And then he threw out his camera around the corner and we were watching through the feed and then they all the cameras went like, was like, okay, it's, I don't remember, it Dokka Bay or which whichever one from Rainbow Six Siege? One guy's got a big ballistic shield with a pulverizer on the front. I was like, you fucking nerds. You stupid nerds. It's just a siege team.
01:18:25
Speaker
Yeah, I love it, though. so great I loved it so much. Had Siege just come out two years prior to this? Yeah. Maybe. Yeah, it did. Yeah, it did. That's funny. That's funny.
01:18:36
Speaker
um Yeah, I mean, I just, I love, this is one of the bits of the interlude I do love, that it is from a different person's perspective, just because then the, like, the insight into Sveta was really interesting. It's like, oh, her organs aren't actually where you'd expect them to be. She has, like,
01:18:53
Speaker
slurpy organs that follow parts of her body um like you know that's why drip feed couldn't hurt her that badly um yeah and you know you've got uh and then the in interact but then just the like oh a bullet ricochets and kills somebody and he's like oh shit a harbinger no It's because his accuracy is 100%. It's 100%. And it's the only thing they respect. A person who can turn into a giant tentacle bear, don't give a fuck.
01:19:24
Speaker
it's the little like It's the literal like over 9,000 meme where he's like, yeah his accuracy hits over 100! He can kill two guys with one bullet. 100!
01:19:38
Speaker
Exactly. Oh my gosh, amazing. It's so, yeah, that that was very entertaining to me. I think that's part of why I enjoyed that was because it was like, and again, just that mindset of like, I'm teacher's most elite squad.
01:19:53
Speaker
Oh, fuck. He just immediately dies. I'll get him. It reminds me of the bit from Rick and Morty, right? the um The civilization that's aging really quickly while Morty's going in for wine, the classic.
01:20:06
Speaker
right And he's like, armed you know I was right. We're going to rule forever. And then Morty comes through with the portal. I was so wrong. but We were so wrong. Run. just Yeah. Yeah. yeah yeah Yeah. Exactly.
01:20:20
Speaker
yeah that Yellow Black was a highlight for me just in terms of... It was fun. and I don't know if... i'm I'm assuming it was intentional comedic effect, I'll say. I'll give them credit for that.
01:20:30
Speaker
um Just in the overconfidence of the squad to take out these characters and then just getting absolutely their poo-poo pushed in. We'll get a little legend at the end.
01:20:46
Speaker
We do. Yeah. so ah i also, i will say, maybe i'm I'm waiting it to the front because I really liked Misha's interlude as well. There was something, maybe it's because we spent more time with Saint.
01:20:58
Speaker
So having a colleague of Saint ah being the interlude focused, I really liked I don't know. I mean, i just kind of enjoyed this perspective on the robots, on figuring out, like, hey, how are things working? um Him mistaking Kinsey for a dragon baby was kind of funny. um Yeah, that was fun. last Unless... I think Jacob had that theory. We'll talk about it. Intense.
01:21:26
Speaker
Yeah, unless...
Misha's Interlude and Humorous Moments
01:21:28
Speaker
in ward 2 we'll find out later yeah in ward 2 oh my gosh itching yeah very close yeah um and i like that too right uh of course we get to see again speaking of people we forgot teacher picked up the young bonner there apparently yeah because why not why the fuck who gives a fuck they don't do anything literally do nothing yeah they just They get blown up by a wing off of one of Saints' mechs, which is great. yeah and They're an incidental. yeah
01:22:01
Speaker
They're a fucking footnote. yeah um yeah Legend being great as always and just blasting them with all the lasers. um I did like, I think I ah like, I like mech suits. So the, the whole scene with Misha being like, you know, hot and cold and being able to see the energy of the barricade, being able to focus the halo fire.
01:22:23
Speaker
and Those were like cool moments. I want to give some credit to that. And I did like the, um the idea of him being like, you know, I'm not happy that Max died, but it feels like a balancing act for my conscience where like, I've done a lot of bad And I know I've killed a lot of people and it feels right that we would lose people we care about too because of that. It's kind of that like interesting. It was this is what did we think was going to happen Kind of. Yeah.
01:22:52
Speaker
Yeah. yeah Also, does Teacher have more crosses tattooed on him now? Like, he had the one on his face when he was in Worm. Saint, I mean. um But I feel like he described he's got like a sleeve of crosses now. Yeah.
01:23:06
Speaker
Absolutely covered. they all move like his face tattoo? Yeah, yeah, yeah. that beat yeah Jacob, how do you feel about this? Yeah, what are your thoughts?
01:23:19
Speaker
On legend in general? Saint, but legend too, yeah. Oh, about Saint. Yeah. I mean, I love Saint. What are you talking about? There it is. We got him. Are you trying to get out of me? You're trying to fill a bingo card?
01:23:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's 100% a bingo card slot. Exactly. We're waiting for it. Yeah. I mean, no, I mean, Alan's talking about all the ah all the the the freaking nerds and trying to pretend like Saint and and his mech squad aren't the biggest nerds of the whole group.
01:23:51
Speaker
ah Absolutely. Absolutely. a snake just wants to play rock'em sock'em robots that's all he wants to do he just get him a copy of mech warriors he'll be good for a while oh my god if he had mech warrior we wouldn't have this problem yeah yeah I do love we know that mech warrior exists in that universe that's real that's true that's funny well with all the other popular media on earth a laugh uh-huh uh yeah I'm sure I could seven degrees it, but there is a reference in here that does continue to point that pop culture does evolve up into a certain point before okay everything goes south.
01:24:32
Speaker
There you go. Interesting. So granted, they probably didn't get MechWarrior 5, but they've got all the classic MechWarrior games. Okay. There you go. Oh, man. um I did like the little crisis moment for Misha, too, where he's like,
01:24:48
Speaker
I could help teacher and protect the young bomb or I could save Saint. And he's like, I'm going to save Saint. I'm going to save my friend. You know what? There's the real question.
01:25:00
Speaker
Do you kill Saint or I should say let Saint die or do you let teacher die?
01:25:08
Speaker
Both are pretty big pieces of shit. So hard.
01:25:15
Speaker
Once again, I got to pick which one would die. I'd be teacher. Yeah, no, I love saying. Yeah, I'd probably kill teacher. Think and stay alive. Like he's problematic and he's ah annoying and also fuck him for fucking with dragon. But also at the same time, like, yeah, what like other than taking out dragon for a bit and being like a little bitch, like what else has he really done? He's literally a knight on a chessboard where like he's kind of annoying, but he can only get used by bigger players. Yeah.
01:25:46
Speaker
That's it. He's not really useful for anything other than like coming out of nowhere and being yeah annoying. Yeah. um And then lastly in this interlude at least we have the conversation between Sveta and the Harbinger which we had alluded to earlier where the Harbinger looked at Sveta and was like that's she's the one we're supposed to stop.
01:26:09
Speaker
But the moment where the Harbinger's like I'm supposed to kill you but I'm not going to yeah I actually want to work with you I thought I'm like ooh are the harbingers like breaking plan with like some plan they've made to kill Sveta like this is interesting this is intriguing is one of the harbingers breaking from the lads perhaps Well, it's number five. yeah Remember, he came to that conclusion in his head. We assume all the others would also come to that conclusion.
01:26:43
Speaker
But that is something that we got in his head from the interlude last time. i think Yeah. There's this like moment where they're like, ah, one of us is not in sync with the rest of us. Like one of us is perhaps going rogue.
01:26:55
Speaker
Yeah. And it's clearly this one.
01:27:01
Speaker
Number five. Number like five. and Because he's like, i'm going to clean up this mess. She's too chaotic. I'm a big fan of order, which seems to be his like his big stick. And then, you know, he's like, hmm.
01:27:16
Speaker
But you're you're like this teacher is kind of also this representation of order. And I don't like him. And you're the representation of chaos. And you're stopping that.
01:27:27
Speaker
So, like, maybe it isn't all order and chaos.
Order vs Chaos: Philosophical Debate
01:27:30
Speaker
how How old is Number Lad? I mean, I think we said they're all like 15, 16 or something. Dang. I was going to try to... It was like Number Lad 5 and Sveta? Hmm?
01:27:44
Speaker
Not quite. No, no, not yet no. no no no boybo Boy, boy, boy. I'm saying boy, boy, boy. I have Beckford right, literally right. Oh, yes. Right here. He's a little man.
01:28:01
Speaker
well oh Digging his his nails into my knee every time he gets happy. Can't give him too much attention. Shall we yeah we vibe on to 15Y? Let's vibe on.
01:28:15
Speaker
Raps going downhill a bit ah from 15X. 15Y interlude various. Second hand scouts the fight and blows up Capricorn. Ingenue talks with Black Goat.
01:28:28
Speaker
gets really deep about who he is on the inside, you might say. um and Checks on Spawner and her other boys and injures Swan Song.
01:28:42
Speaker
You know, okay as in terms of interludes that I remember, ah as I'll just say not exciting as the ah what's is it? Secondhand.
01:28:58
Speaker
interlude part is? Yeah, yeah, yeah, secondhand. It's one of the ones I remember the most. And I don't know why.
01:29:12
Speaker
Well, again, in terms of, um, again, that power flexing, where it's so... It's such an interesting usage of powers, right?
01:29:26
Speaker
Where we get insight into how secondhand's time-stopping power works. Yeah. It's really cool. like Basically, he's slowing down time so much that he is essentially swimming through atoms, and the friction that that causes without his special suit nearly kills him.
01:29:49
Speaker
Yeah. It's such an interesting power and like a way to describe, you know, because that there's that question of like speedsters, right? Like how do you not break physics with speedsters?
01:30:00
Speaker
And technically you could say he's a speedster of a sort. um And i I think that's why it's so memorable and why I at least thought it was interesting. It sucks that a major character moment happens mostly off screen because of it, but... um in terms again of that power flexing I wonder if that's part of why Wild Bo chose to do this is he's like man these guys all got cool powers I gotta to highlight one of them somewhere is as good a place to do it as any ah second hand gets to show off his pea soup swimming yeah cause it felt to me like a diving bell apparatus like he's got one of those old suits on you know with the bubble helmet and he's just like
01:30:45
Speaker
just He's got to push through the water and it's a struggle the whole way. He has his own oxygen tanks. He's got to carry those. um The fact that he listens to an audiobook and he finishes it because it takes so damn long to get around. like yeah That's... Oh, man.
01:31:04
Speaker
And then he talks about like how often he wants to do that. He's like, I don't want to do that, but like once a month, which makes sense because he's probably he's probably taking... We'll just say it's a a small audio book of about 9,000 or 900,000 words. be 16 hours. 900,000 words.
01:31:20
Speaker
so nine hours minimum might be sixteen hours you're saying nine hundred thousand words Is that right? 90,000. My bad, I was right the first time. 90,000. You're right. Sorry. 90,000 words. 160,000 for, you know, 16 hours of him just sitting there, just plodding along the ocean's depths, you know, with the crushing weight of all of time and the molecules that he's got to push through.
01:31:54
Speaker
but yeah and just the the visceral description, too, where he's like, like he he had to do it every day for prancer and he was peeing pink and pooping black like and had a cough that would go away like he was bruised and like oh man that sucks like it's wild so it's it's interesting i was looking at just the descriptions of the members of the speed runners not their fates necessarily because i don't i think we know what happens but i didn't want to accidentally spoil anything in the future um
01:32:25
Speaker
But just kind of looking at how all of them require Tinkertech for their powers to work. So they're both like Tinker and something else in terms of their power dynamic, which is interesting.
01:32:37
Speaker
Because yeah, like he's mentioned, without his Tinkertech, without his suits, he really can't do it that often or it hurts too badly. Right. And just the the image when he gets trapped in Victoria's fear aura, um and he can't escape because it's just on all the time there.
01:32:54
Speaker
Um, and just every step is just like, fuck, fuck, fuck. Like just every step is just, yeah. le by Yeah. Cool power though. Very cool illustration. Um,
01:33:10
Speaker
i guess, yeah, the disappointment comes in what happens to Byron and like it it being in his interlude of all things, right? Yeah. I mean, to me, this this ties into the whole thing.
01:33:23
Speaker
I have more thoughts about it with Swan Song, but this idea of the emotional weight and it's like because it's not being carried by somebody who gives a shit, ah it's hard to feel like, okay, well, are we missing things because he's just not paying attention or are we like...
01:33:40
Speaker
Fuck, like, I would carry, because even even with a sense of, like, oh, he's so cavalier, he just doesn't care. Like, fuck these guys, he's just doing his job. Like, that can have a really heavy feeling to it, too, that it's like, no, they're not just any guys that you're just blowing up. Like, these are people that are important to us, but even then it doesn't feel like that either. It just kind of feels like...
01:34:07
Speaker
I don't know. It's that emotional weight thing again. it just feels like it's... We could have something something, but we didn't.
01:34:18
Speaker
Yeah.
01:34:23
Speaker
I was trying to think if ah if we got any major deaths and in Wyrm via interlude. like Like meaningful, impactful, emotional ones. i And I don't.
01:34:35
Speaker
i don't think we'd I don't think we got any any major moments in interludes with the exception of like, you know, you need a worthy opponent. Like, Eidolon's perspective for his death makes sense.
01:34:48
Speaker
Yes. You know.
01:34:51
Speaker
i was like, i i I don't, I think. Yeah, I can't. I can't think of anybody. Because, like, yeah. And then we have characters.
01:35:03
Speaker
yeah I guess I was going to say the most important characters. um who Not the deaths, but like character moments. Of course, we get the Jack Slash interlude um right with Theo is a pretty important one. but Yeah, that one's balance one's great. yeah Bernard's saying that we did get some deaths in interludes. but i Yeah, but like were they important deaths or were they just like deaths? Because if it's people... like We didn't have any...
01:35:31
Speaker
Undersider deaths that happened in an interlude. i they got Yeah, the closest, I mean, Gru's sort of off-screen a bit, but it's not an interlude. is And he's not dead. and been handled better And he's not dead, right, exactly. So, you know, I can even on the list. Yeah, um, oh, um, hey he wasn't super major, but, um, Accord dies in an interlude.
01:35:55
Speaker
Accord dies in... And Tattletail gets injured by Cody. Yes. um Okay. because we Yeah, so we there was that one big one we had Cody's interlude.
01:36:07
Speaker
Baketa died in an interlude, but that made sense because she was in prison. Yeah. And not like not a huge character. yeah comparatively Yeah. A player near the beginning, but not a like huge, huge.
01:36:22
Speaker
Yeah. J-Man says, I think Wild Boat does have a problem in general with death moments, in my opinion, even in Wyrm, you have stuff like Gru. Yeah, those moments where it's not like totally apparent what happened or like it's not quite seen on screen.
01:36:36
Speaker
um The thing is, though, like some of the moments we do get, right, the coil scene, the the ah Regent scene, um like those are ills me moments that like oh yeah stand out in that sense. Yes.
01:36:51
Speaker
ah For sure, for sure. Because i it just it like you can have a scene that just... And I think those deaths where it takes a second, we were like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. Did we just lose them? Like, oh my God. And you're putting the pieces together. And it's not just like a and their body crumpled to the ground. It's like you have this long drawn out moment of like realizing we are they down and out or are we good or like what happened? And I think that we could have that, which I i mean, think at the moment Byron's not dead yet.
01:37:27
Speaker
i'm not Listen, I'm not confirming anyone's dead until I see a body. Yeah. yeah he's He was not doing so hot, so Tristan switched out with him, as we learned later. And could have been, remember, we do know, just as a ah hope for that, too, we do know that Contessa was operating off of memory.
01:37:45
Speaker
If at the time she asked her power... how to get to the path of victory,
Anjanu's Power Dynamics
01:37:50
Speaker
what's going to happen. If at that time, Harbinger, number five, thought he was going to kill Sveta when he got the chance. And then changed his mind. have death number two.
01:38:00
Speaker
he changed his mind while Contestant's power wouldn't have known. There is a possibility that Byron is not death number two, that Sveta was going to be, but Harbinger kind of changed her fate, so to speak, by making a different decision.
01:38:17
Speaker
that's's Let's go with that. I don't want to think about buying and dying. Again. Let's go with that. I like that so much better. yeah get right yeah I choose to believe this.
01:38:27
Speaker
I choose to believe things and that's fine. It keeps me safe from myself. Yeah. Speaking that.
01:38:38
Speaker
put a me and send it away
01:38:43
Speaker
Mail that box to myself. We just quoted the same thing at the same time. Beautiful. a Yeah, let's get to the other stupid part. To Anjanu and her squad. him Let's go.
01:39:05
Speaker
Black lamb. Anjanu. Into the boys. Yeah, i I will say, so i I really didn't like the interludes. I didn't feel like, and I think it's because we jump around a little bit.
01:39:17
Speaker
I honestly didn't care that much. Anjanoo was the only one that I actually was invested in. I really like her. I really like her powers. Very interesting. I like her little, like, saucy self.
01:39:29
Speaker
um i I liked her little little, a little bit of backstory of her in the birdcage. Really enjoyed that. I thought that was very fun.
01:39:40
Speaker
um caught me off guard a little bit there with ah ah Black Lamb. Whoa. That was unexpected.
01:39:52
Speaker
That gave me the hee-biddy-be-jeebies. Whoa. Yep. But yeah that was fun. i enjoy I did enjoy that part quite bit. Yeah. the like And then the like step on the hand of like, oh, yeah I'm so sorry.
01:40:08
Speaker
this Yeah, she... is yeah She is a minx. ah And again, we're seeing linking up with teacher having benefits. Her power used to need to need touch. Now she can just look at you and command you know the shift in power.
01:40:28
Speaker
yeah Which I had to actually look up what her power does, but basically it it she can't negate powers, but it kind of plays with the levels. with Like, she's, like, if you think about powers in, like, an equalizer, and she's, like, playing with the different levels of the equalizer. Like, higher power, lower control. Higher control, lower power. like Like, she's just messing with the levels of your power, which is so interesting as as a power of, like, doo-doo-doo, just gonna mess with you a little, you know?
01:40:58
Speaker
Yeah, right. Basically, Regen's power on steroids. it's like subtle The subtle adjustments. Yeah.
01:41:10
Speaker
I love him in a building. Yeah, her little crew, i had to look up everybody in her crew and who they were. um m There was Captain Claw. I don't know much about him. I assume he's a villain to Harpoon. He was...
01:41:29
Speaker
oh so he he was ah he was this this is his first mention so I had to confirm I'm like this is the first time we heard of Captain Claw right it is he have lobster claws because that would bring me such joy no no so he he is he's basically a Jojo stand user where he He summons an aura that like snaps out and attacks people. But he himself just kind of stands there and like aura farms, I guess. i don't know. he like his like yeah yeah yeah That's hilarious. He might as well have
01:42:08
Speaker
yeah No, it it is literally, it's like, he can create a beastial image over his upper body that can attack things around him. It has great strength and regenerative abilities. And and that's literally all we know. It's about his power. all right He's literally just like, i imagine he's just got the like... Exactly. Leicester
01:42:29
Speaker
was a ward, apparently. Um... leer was a ward apparently um
01:42:40
Speaker
And yeah that's about all we knew about him. he has try sure Usher we knew about a bit more because Usher was really key in the Behemoth fight. I forgot about him.
01:42:51
Speaker
But Usher is the one who can negate powers, basically. um So he could negate Behemoth's death aura and allow people to get close enough to attack he directly I knew the name sounded familiar, but I couldn't remember why. Yeah, I knew it did too. It was one of those I'm like, what is he? I knew about him at one point. okay um And then of course Spawner is a one of Bonesaw's hybrids. cool um Beautiful.
01:43:17
Speaker
Gross. Love it. um now Don't worry, J-Man. I didn't spoil anything for myself. um But yeah, Spawner is the hybrid between Crawler and Breeder.
Spawner's Hybrid Nature and Downfall
01:43:28
Speaker
yeah um And that's the horrifying. And Nedley, as Twan Song calls him. Nedley! Oh my gosh. The grossest thing about this individual is their name.
01:43:41
Speaker
Exactly. ah Nedley. Get the fuck out here.
01:43:47
Speaker
Yeah. Beautiful. yeah
01:43:53
Speaker
I did like the ah yeah the subtle way, talking about Anjanew's power, and the subtle way she just makes Swan Song fall by like ah just messing with her like innate ability to control her descent. She jumps thinking that she can just blast herself and then and nothing.
01:44:14
Speaker
Yeah. And just ah breaks her legs on impact. su Yeah. And then goes to shoot and one the guys go you know were in Spawner's head so he's like...
01:44:27
Speaker
Little does she know, she does not have the protection of the Manton effect anymore. And then just blows her arm Blows her fingers off. Yeah. Oh, gosh. That was really tough to She really blows it off at the elbow.
01:44:42
Speaker
it blu it's a it takes a couple of tries to get all the way up to the socket. And then to yeah blow out the socket as well. Because it she it's little by little as it goes. Which is just...
01:44:55
Speaker
Like, we've I feel like we've seen some really impactful moments with Ashley. And when, you know, we talk about her arms getting cut off by the Slaughterhouse-Nine, like, that's a really big, ooh, impact moment. When she does the whole mic drop, hand drop moment at the the book signing event thing. Like, those are, these are all these, like, big, like, we know how important this is for her. Like, we know, like, Rain's constantly tinkering and updating and fixing, and it's like,
01:45:22
Speaker
to To know that she's... like The first blast probably caught her off guard, but then like every blast afterward is a choice. like She knows that she's just going to keep... Blowing off bits of her arm. And it's like... And she does it anyways. And it's it's really... um There's a... the ah He says something at one point about... um The more she talks, like, the less confident she is. the She talks more when she's, like, scared. Or or maybe not scared. but She talks more when she's uncertain of herself. And she's talking a lot in this part. And she's talking a lot. And she's blasting left and right. And all I can think of is, like, this is this is Ashley...
01:46:00
Speaker
scrambling like i don't feel like we've really seen her scramble too much because she's usually like pretty in control of herself and the people around her and what's going on and like this is her scrambling and that hurt a bit watching it happen but it's still i would have liked to have seen more with okay with him my my big nitpicky thing she keeps calling him little brother which is so great love that so much But there's we don't really have like he's having these moments where he's like, oh, I vaguely remember this or like, I don't know why I know that, but I do.
01:46:37
Speaker
And like little kind of moments while he's thinking, but we don't really he's not really in his head too much. He's not really thinking about her in relation to him and who they are and that emotion potential emotional tie that's happening there between them. And I would have liked a little bit more of that. I think it would have made his perspective more interesting.
01:46:55
Speaker
ah It would have made his relation to her more interesting. It's a lot of like details of all of the orifices that his bugs are coming out of, which, oh my god, that was disgusting. ah What orifices?
01:47:06
Speaker
All of them, apparently. I've never been more disgusted by the word urethra in my life. I know, right? Or right before that, he made all of the sphincters and yeah All over his body.
01:47:20
Speaker
Yeah. but yep i it's I think to that point, Hannah, about the emotional depth of the character whose head we're in, Ned and Bradley, Ned being Crawler, Bradley being Breeder, and we what we know about them would not indicate emotional depth, right? In the sense of, we know, like, crawlwler Crawler had his, become the apex of evolution, and that was all that he had going for him, character-wise. Right. You know, he literally had one goal in life, and he, you know, died doing what he loved. Mm-hmm.
01:47:55
Speaker
And Breeder... With his arms out of the sky. Yeah, Breeder, we don't even know who he is, so... Yeah. Yeah. I just, i it feels like they do have this kind of connection and it could have been played up a little bit more in his head. Like, you give me at least a little bit of something. But he was just like uninterested in in verbally sparring with her. he was like uninterested in playing any games. Like he was just like,
01:48:20
Speaker
I have a job to do, which again is understandable, but we could have played that up then a little bit more. It just felt like it was a very like a neutral, like he's just kind of neutral. And I would have liked to see either like, because yeah at one point she keeps calling him little brother and he's like, this is the best we get. It's just kind of like a,
01:48:41
Speaker
Like, yeah you don't want to... you don't want to talk we don't want to just have a little moment since we are so good at going on for paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs with somebody thinking in their head when one second has passed. We don't want to take just a moment to see how we feel about that. No? Okay, that's Yeah. Whatever. Man, it I'm kind of of two minds of it because i not necessarily blow by blow, but this was the kind of fight that I could visualize really well. I don't know why.
01:49:15
Speaker
um and man,
01:49:19
Speaker
the man
01:49:22
Speaker
just the desperation of the fight where spawner feels like he's on top and that's what i like about it from being from his perspective the one thing i like about it the emotional depth is lost but the desperation and spawner feeling like i'm the best thing there is and she can't touch me these other capes are aren't aren't shit like i i can kill them easily And then his fatal flaw ultimately being that he is that hybrid between Ned and Bradley and he can't really decide on things.
01:49:54
Speaker
And he ends up getting caught in the middle. like Yeah. I really liked like like that part and just the visualization of it. like right We talked about Ashley's hands crumbling. She's holding the power for too long and is eating away at her fake arm.
01:50:10
Speaker
um Climbing the ladder with the one arm. like just Something about that just really...
01:50:18
Speaker
visually was cool um and to fran's comment i the other hand though i do think it is really wild bow again it's that power flexing right like with second hand he and this is more 15z technically we've moved on past 15 y but that's fine um but like with second hand he wanted to flex here's a bit of interesting world building. We have, like Fran pointed out, one of the fusion capes, who we never really got to see inside of before, and what it's like for two people to be fused into one mentally.
01:50:52
Speaker
um And, yeah, i think I think, though, unfortunately, like you said, you do lose a little bit of the emotional impact of it. Yeah. Because then it's it's awkward, you have to have a piece of his head remain alive so you can see the rest of the scene play out, right? Yeah. like he's Just like awkwardly sitting in a swivel chair or something. don't know what it was. yeah Here's what's sad we have multiple characters that can run around and be omnipresent for these omnipresent things.
World-Building and Character Backstories
01:51:26
Speaker
We did it once with ah the custodian. like So maybe we used that up. but And then ah personally, I think we should have just had an entire thing for Mama Mathers.
01:51:40
Speaker
um because we could have had her from her and perspective technically entirely. Yeah. The way that her power works. And also like combine that with actually doing her backstory, not just telling us her backstory.
01:51:57
Speaker
That would have been great. She has a really interesting backstory for sure. Super tragic backstory, but then tying it back into Cauldron and like her whole like I'm just kind of here. Semi-loyal to whoever Cauldron is at the time.
01:52:16
Speaker
Doesn't matter who. ah Which is why she's there with Teacher in the first place. It's interesting. Also, we learned that she's Cauldron. Okay.
01:52:29
Speaker
yeah yeah Yeah, that was interesting. A little side note. she is Also, that she probably in reverse got...
01:52:42
Speaker
I know she got her powers and they are surprised they're not... She did not pass her powers down to Elijah. um Hers are separate.
01:52:53
Speaker
Bit of a surprise. but a bit of a surprise. But...
01:52:58
Speaker
I almost wonder if there's not some weird, like, something weird going on there with, like, shards. Because they have remarkably similar powers.
01:53:10
Speaker
Very similar. Yeah.
01:53:14
Speaker
Yeah, i I would not be surprised if perhaps Cauldron was somehow able to I mean mean, maybe it is a DNA thing, right? We've talked about how shards tend to latch onto DNA, so maybe she asks, she's if she asks specifically, hey, I need a power that helps me counteract my son's power so I can take care of him better and survive. yeah um And they're like yeah, we can give you a master you know master stranger power. and That's what that would be.
01:53:41
Speaker
Master stranger thinker, something like that. And what do you know? Just so happens to be a lot like her son's power. It kind of makes sense, yeah. Definitely that the DNA connection. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it makes me wonder about nursery a little bit, about how that's going to go when nursely nursery does eventually have her baby.
01:54:00
Speaker
I think that's not going to happen. Really? thought the implication with nursery was that, yeah, baby was dead.
01:54:12
Speaker
Oh. ah Oh. What? We're like, not dead, but like, not dead. but like's not was like part of her, right? or was like Yeah, I was gonna say that it was like perma-baby.
01:54:23
Speaker
yeah Because technically, it's like, I don't think it's she's ever going to give birth. Yeah. Is the whole thing. gotta have that vibe. The shard is technically the babies, but because DNA-wise and like body-wise, they're still one-ish, she has somewhat control over that.
01:54:46
Speaker
Right. Oh, that's horrifying. she's a Mexican. I have been... She is a Mexican. That is correct. Even as Fran said, we've even speculated that she's not actually even pregnant. Not actually pregnant at all. Well, okay. I mean, it is medically It's somatic. It has happened. Yes, absolutely. Where yeah someone just wants a baby so bad that everything about your body is like as if it has a baby and then there's actually no baby. It's a really weird thing. ah i was going under the assumption that she had the baby. The baby has powers and it's really fucking weird. And she's just like, you know, ready to pop any day now. And like when that baby's born, that's going to be a big problem. I actually have been kind of...
01:55:29
Speaker
I haven't said this. I've been kind of going under the assumption that nursery giving birth and having a baby, this baby is going to be a fucking problem and we're going to to deal with it later on in the book. So the fact that I'm not even close, I'm kind of bummed out a little bit and also very sad for nursery. taylor Taylor's great return is as the baby killer is just like swoop in and shoot the baby.
01:55:52
Speaker
my god, that's terrible. Oh man. yeah i gotta use this around the sex yeah yeah Sounds like a job for Calabi. Yeah, there you go. ah Fabulous. We're going be in point Z. I was going to say you wanted Yeah, i can I can just read this summary 15Z. interlude various.
01:56:16
Speaker
Citrine and Number Man get car bombed, apparently. Mama Mathers fights Chevalier and others. Rain. Swansong fights it out with Spawner and they both die.
01:56:28
Speaker
Teacher has cracked a hole to the shard dimension and he escapes with Legend. um Yeah, a couple comments I did want to get to as well before we did that. um Can you believe Valafor triggered as a baby him being a first gen natural? cape Yeah.
01:56:47
Speaker
I, the joke in my head is like mama Mather is being a newborn parent and like going to like some kind of mom group. And they're like, she's just like, yeah, i just, I look at my baby and I just can't stop looking at him. And they're all like, no, that's sweet. they're like no, you don't understand. I i literally can't stop looking at him. And they're like,
01:57:10
Speaker
What do you mean, dear? like ah but You just love him so much. I love that. That's hilarious. Yeah. um And then J-Man said, the squandered potential is the worst part of a word for them. yes It would almost feel better if the story was just asked, but there are so many good pieces here.
01:57:30
Speaker
The puzzle just isn't stuck together right. yeah And I think that's that's kind of where we are too, it sounds like, most of us. Yeah. I mean, we've we've said this before, and i will I'll
Character Deaths: Impact and Necessity
01:57:39
Speaker
keep saying it. as As critical as I am about story things and plot and some character choices, whatever, ah we wouldn't be doing this podcast if we weren't big fans of Wild Bo and Worm and very invested in reading all of his work. So it's like, I i will say, even though I have been very critical with this episode, there are a lot of things that I love. And I love to get mad about, too. So, like...
01:58:04
Speaker
It's, oh gosh, it's, it's a, you know, it's angry because we care. Yes. Angry because we care. You know what? That'll be our new merch t-shirt. Angry because we care. There it is.
01:58:18
Speaker
it's not Exactly. That's that twisted. Yeah, there you go. That's that twisted parental logic of like, you're most critical of the people you love the most. and Darling, that's why I tell you everything wrong with you.
01:58:32
Speaker
Oh, come on. No! That's Get in. Get in. There was another ah a trope with Mama Mathers. I don't even know if it's a trope. I call it a trope.
01:58:42
Speaker
I'll call it the yeah the Doom trope. It's existed before Doom, but I only think of it in terms of Doom. you play any of the new Doom games, the way Doom in introduces new enemy types is via a boss battle.
01:58:56
Speaker
So you have a big boss battle with this enemy type. It's awful and takes forever and like four hours of just reloading the fight over and over and over again until you beat the boss you're like finally and then that just becomes like an enemy type you just fight all the time yeah but because you know how to fight the enemy because you've spent four hours perfecting how to beat it it's way easier to fight moving forward and it's just like now it's an enemy type and you can just keep fighting And I get that a lot with, in this moment with like Mama Mathers specifically, but a few other characters where it's like, she was a big problem early on in this story.
01:59:33
Speaker
Like, yeah you know, the equivalent of the Leviathan arc early on was the Fallen and Mama Mathers. Like they beat her almost by luck. Like it's just, she's so close.
01:59:47
Speaker
And now in this fight, it's, but She's not trivial, like it some effort. No. But you just, you they get through it so quick and I'm like, oh Yeah.
01:59:58
Speaker
it's hard also yeah they do it's it's rough what's right it's the they have the counter tech now where they're just like she's like why can't I control rain and it's because her her power is based on people seeing her yeah so they just make it so they can't see her she's just like up to them so it's like it's ah such a simple solution but it's really funny yeah that that is the way it works um and obviously if she touches you or something then you know you hear her voice and then it's different but right I will say, too, this is one portion where the audiobook was fascinating to me because the... Just as a side note, they had somebody... i don't know if it was their natural accent or not, but it only with what I can describe as a vaguely Eastern European accent. ye
02:00:45
Speaker
Yep. I did not listen to the audiobook, so I'm... Are you going to say my favorite thing? I was going to say it for the end, but if you're going to bring it up now... No, no, no. ah But I was just going to say, in my head, I'm like...
02:00:57
Speaker
man i wish this was just like a deep southern accent and because that's what it should be and i i think that'd be so fun that would be like the moment i saw my baby i locked eyes with him and and i knew but yeah yeah oh like oh rain still creepy wait oh what the na this is a deep callback anyone ever watched peach dragon Oh, my gosh. That's a long time. Oh, that's a callback. The, like, hillbillies that were chasing after him the whole time, that's what that accent just reminded me of, Nick.
02:01:34
Speaker
And Sam, exactly. Yeah, exactly. But that was just the only one. audiobook was really good this time, generally. um but But that was the one I'm like, the Eastern European accent worked, except for the fact that, like, in my head,
02:01:49
Speaker
she's southern because of the fallen or just all southern rednecks to me sorry i like that uh that that voice uh voice actor was was very good she's um narrated a few different interludes before but nick did you notice how that particular uh reader pronounced one of the characters trying to remember now um when someone oh sheval yes she said shevalier No way. Amazing. It's canon now. Okay. just so her.
02:02:30
Speaker
or refuse to believe ah that's funny that's actually i might have to go back and listen to it just so i can hear her read that bit. Yeah. I'm posting my exact reaction when I heard that into our Patreon. oh nice. Behind scenes.
02:02:49
Speaker
but we'll We'll watch it afterwards by the patrons. Can't react to it. Amazing. Yeah, yeah no, she did she did. I forgot about that. um so which Phenomenal. that Again, it's one of those moments where I'm like, I really liked this interlude, and I wish we'd had more of it sooner. The insight into Mama Mather's background, the insight into how her powers work, and how it is...
02:03:14
Speaker
Like for her, the cult thing is real, right? She talks about like, no, I punish people who don't believe in God and the Bible. Like, it's not like, and it's not just a power thing. She's like, because I'm right. Like, you know? Yes. It's creepy. And so. Creepy. creep Yeah. Yeah. Super creepy.
02:03:31
Speaker
Yeah. Super weird. And the. There's couple things she says that just make me go. Yeah. Oh. oh oh no yeah just still like ah the yeah the like how she she rubs her hands through to Chevalier's hair. oh through his hair like and then then she's like, and then I do it again, but with my power and not with my hand. And I'm like, well and then she puts her fingers in his mouth.
02:03:59
Speaker
And so she can, oh, oh no. No, i no, no. And then can face She can taste him tasting her, which is just not not the thing that you want to be real.
02:04:14
Speaker
Ever. It's weird. But how powerful it is, right? Where she's like, first she makes her blood taste sweet to him, but then she makes it feel like acid. So he believes his lower jaw has been burned away by the acid of her blood.
02:04:29
Speaker
And like, oh man. What triggers the fight? So good. i must what the He sticks her fingers in his mouth. and so He sticks her fingers in there and bites down. in him Which then allows her, now that he's tasted her blood, she can get in.
02:04:46
Speaker
another It's another way to be in him. yeah Beautiful. Who knew, the talk Anjanew had getting who knew ah you know for all the talk anja knew had of getting getting Chevalier inside of her. Mama Mathers got inside of him first.
02:05:09
Speaker
Oh, gosh. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, the thing with him, though, is without his, because he's got the whole nullification thing, he can't, he doesn't have the strength to stand up because of the weight of his armor. Oh, yeah, that was cool. And he can't lift his head up to look at her, so they have to go and help to move his head up to look at her.
02:05:27
Speaker
yeah And like tilt his head up. And ah so interesting. Yeah, very cool. you it J-Man commented, Mathers is still insanely creepy. Also just casually mentioning she's going to segregate the black and browns from the white.
02:05:40
Speaker
Actually, what she says is, is the black and browns will be on their knees serving the white. It made me very grossed out. Like it was, it's, oh. Yeah. yeah we She's icky. She's icky in lots of different ways.
02:05:55
Speaker
yeah well Is it implied she died? She at least got beaten So, it's hard to tell. This was one of those interludes where I don't always read the ah the comments at the end of the chapters like to try to get the live reaction from when the episode released or the chapter released.
02:06:11
Speaker
ah But for this one, I did. and it seems very unclear. like Everyone's like... don't know what's going on. So I guess we're supposed to be a little up in the air.
02:06:22
Speaker
As Fran said, Chevalier really is the male cape that gets harassed by female villains the most. and it's like yeah he's guy He's the poster child for like, hey, men get harassed too. but he's yeah a night and china Assault is a assault. and heard it Yeah.
02:06:37
Speaker
yeah like o yeah what ah what a creep yeesh um Yeah, either Citrine or Number Man are dead, too. We don't know that. Number Man OG. Yeah.
02:06:49
Speaker
what i What a throwaway one. Supposedly. Supposedly. I don't believe it. i don't believe i'm I'm not going to. that Those two are the types of capes that I don't believe they're dead until like somebody reliable says they're dead, right? I'm not going off of teachers where they're dead.
02:07:06
Speaker
I don't believe it until I see a body. still haven't seen Groove's body, so I don't believe Saints word to teacher. Yeah, Saints word to teacher. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, i'm definitely not going off of that third-hand knowledge there. Like...
02:07:20
Speaker
The fact that... No, I honestly... ahead. I was just going to say, if one of them did actually die, the question is which one died. And the best comment I saw was that if one of them truly is dead, it's definitely OG Number Man who would have mathematically found the way to save Citrine.
02:07:39
Speaker
Oh, ah yeah. oh I don't think so because of the way or i don't think so either a Saint describes it, if I'm remembering correctly. And I got to really reread it again. But he says something to the effect of they were they got a call and fled and be due to the rush, ah overlooked their safety protocols.
02:07:58
Speaker
That was like, Harbinger overlooked his safety protocol empty protocols? I don't think so. So yeah, we'll see. No, to be fair, if anyone besides s Citrine could make Harbinger rush, it would be Contessa.
02:08:13
Speaker
And the implication is the call came from Contessa. So whoa whoa no, it's not. Oh, that's true. Who called? Dinah. Yeah. and that Right. night Right. Cause she immediately has a meeting with ah the anti-parahuman group right after.
02:08:33
Speaker
yeah Well, that's true. do It says she's mad. She's she's angry. tes us they Did Contessa tell Kinsey to make a call? She told them to like, hey, tell them that they need to get out of here. I thought they were talking about that location, but they're back in the city. Yeah, no. Maybe it was her and they blew up, but I'm going to check. think Contessa was like, she might be right.
02:08:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. I want to say it was Contessa being like, hey, you and someone needs to call the mayor, tell her to go, like, leave whatever meeting she's in and leave. Oh, oh, oh. So she talks to the Harbingers and says, I need one of you to go to Citrine. Tell her to go home right away.
02:09:16
Speaker
Yes. And he says, I'll stay The other one goes, cool, I'll go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
02:09:24
Speaker
Right, mid but even more, then you're left with, Technically, the call came from Citrine, but it would have been one of the Harbingers. If it's a Contessa plan, then it could have been like, oh, if I do this, then Teacher will think they're dead, and, you know... Yeah. Maybe so. know It could have, you know, who knows? It's Contessa.
02:09:39
Speaker
we'll We'll find out. Yeah. Or even Dinah, same thing, honestly, at that point. Whoever, who's ever behind that moment is like... We'll figure out what was. Because Dinah was mad about the bombing because it was assumed that the bombing was because of the anti-parahuman group. And Dinah's been potentially maybe allying herself with them a little bit, which...
02:10:02
Speaker
yeah is weird, and we need to talk about that, John. um But, yeah, and so she's mad after the the explosion happens, after the bomb goes off, which I assume would make sense if she's like, fuckers, what are we doing?
02:10:16
Speaker
What are we doing? That's true. That's true.
02:10:24
Speaker
Ugh, crazy. I don't know. um Yeah, i will say, too, that ah we We should have seen Ashley's death coming because i I was thinking about it and I'm like, you know, her name is Swan Song. like that it's like That's not the most foreshadowy name.
02:10:46
Speaker
i think we did call it pretty early on. like if somebody i think last time we may have. um And early on we may have called, like if anybody were to die, we could see this character dying. um Maybe we did, maybe we didn't. you know But we'll pat ourselves on the back either way.
02:11:00
Speaker
um for being technically right one way or another. ah But yeah, I was just thinking about it. i was like, man, swan song does literally mean like the final act.
02:11:11
Speaker
yeah So. I just watched a Supernatural episode where it was called swan song and I was like, yes, I know what this means. Yes. Context clues. I'll say my quick piece because I've said it before. No need to rehash it.
02:11:27
Speaker
Character deaths are stupid.
02:11:30
Speaker
yeah I hated her death, and I would have hated anybody's death. yeah It is what it is. yeah I'm upset about it. It hasn't hit me. I don't know how I feel yet. it Like I said, I don't feel like the emotional weight was there, and so at this point, I'm like, she's taking a nap, I guess. know There's going to be a scene with Kinsey in 16 that makes it happen. The problem...
02:11:56
Speaker
with ah character deaths in a story like this, and unfortunately Wildboe wrote himself into this position, is you just gave us Vista, which was as as as assured a death as you could write, and then wrote her out of it. Yeah. um And it was an emotional death, too. And it was an emotional death. It was a big, impactful fight.
02:12:20
Speaker
um All this kind of stuff. So, like, as a reader... you i You can't convince me that she's dead now until I read to the end at the end of the story.
02:12:30
Speaker
And she's not there anymore. And unfortunately, that's going to take a lot of the emotion out of the death going forward. Because i'll never that will not be resolved until I finish the story.
02:12:43
Speaker
So it's just, it'll it'll always be there. It's just one of those things. So... Unfortunately, I think it's just... It loses lot impact. That aside, this is the most... I feel like it's appropriate that if Swansong did die, that it is the...
02:13:01
Speaker
the most anime-ass fight scene. was a badass fight. For sure. It was. In the book so far. Not only that, with the one-liners, where even the line, I can't remember what exactly she says, but Nedley is like, no, that's not a good line. Yes. The darkness is my ally. The shadows come over. And he's like, no, that's not a good line.
02:13:26
Speaker
Yeah. ah no i mean it's a it was a great ah is a great fight though fight and a good way to go out going out in the blaze of glory yeah if you're gonna do it just i'm trying to think of what it i'm trying to think of like a fight it reminds me of and i think in anime and it it reminds me of trying to think of a couple of things right where it like
02:13:53
Speaker
It reminds me a little bit of like when we finally see Alphonse in Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood actually fight, and he gets one of the Philosopher's Stones and he fights Pride and ah the other guy. That's a great fight scene. like we We haven't seen him fight much before, and so having him do that was great.
02:14:10
Speaker
It reminds me like early Naruto, kind of the um fight with Zabuza and Zabuza as an apprentice, who I can't remember, where Naruto and Sasuke are losing so badly, yeah but they managed to pull it out in the end. Haku?
02:14:26
Speaker
hawkk like Fights like that. Haku, I think that is Haku, yeah. um you know So fights like that where it's like you don't know if they're going to pull it out. you're They're fighting a superior foe. and then But they're still in it. They're still quippy. They're still like going there with it. um Yeah, it it was a good... In the purely fight sense of it, it was an appropriate ending. and The emotional side of it, not as strong as I wish it could have been. but you know we We take what we get, I guess.
02:15:00
Speaker
Yeah, J-Man said, even though it doesn't have the weight it needs, I appreciate her having a 1v1 with a fellow Slotterhouse clone, and I can kind of agree with that. would have liked it to be weightier! Yeah, I could have. If this was somehow the other, it was Damsel versus Swansong, then I feel like this would have been a great fight. Gosh, this would have been crazy. Imagine Damsel and Swansong taking each other out.
02:15:27
Speaker
but Just being shits to each other. Oh, man, now that... Fighting your evil clone again. like you have to. Would have been great. you know Would have been good.
02:15:44
Speaker
I'm going to do a PowerPoint on why character deaths are stupid. Oh, please please please. Is that going to be our next Patreon content? Yeah, right. When you say character deaths are stupid, could do you mean like all character deaths or just these in particular? No, no, no. All character deaths. It's a stupid trope.
02:16:01
Speaker
Characters should not die. Characters shouldn't die. He's talked about this before. i have. Yeah. Specifically. I think it involves Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones is a great example, but there's a lot of good examples.
02:16:14
Speaker
yeah See, I love when characters die. It's like one of my favorite things. give me ah Give me a good weight or else it doesn't mean anything. Give me ah give you a tidbit of what I mean. Give me a tidbit of what you mean by characters shouldn't die. I'm curious.
02:16:25
Speaker
Okay, and that i I say it absolutely. It's not an absolute statement. There are absolutely stories where character deaths are integral to the plot um and work very well. um But I think for the most part, authors and screenwriters and storytellers use character deaths as a cheap ploy to emotionally connect the audience with a certain character instead of naturally developing those emotions with the character.
02:16:56
Speaker
um off the dome I would need some time to to give you some really good examples of that but ah most of the time I think the story would be improved if the character if the characters don't die in the scenarios go okay okay okay I'm very excited I'm looking forward to it not gonna lie I'm thinking about all the people who die in my books
02:17:22
Speaker
A lot of them die. Everyone dies. Obviously, in a story like The Hunger Games, characters have to die, right? Yes. or like There are times when it's a central central theme or purpose of the story, right? those I'm not talking about those, obviously. That kind of stuff.
02:17:41
Speaker
Yeah. We'll get, yeah, we'll have some fun. I'm very excited. Yeah. yeah Okay. I can't remember this PowerPoint. I do. I can definitely see where you're coming from in the sense where if it is not integral to the plot or if it doesn't like at least make sense structurally within the world the author has created, it can kind of take you out of it in the sense of why did that character die? Oh, it was just for the emotion of it, for the moment of it, because, you know, the author wanted them to.
02:18:10
Speaker
um Like, because somebody had to die. ah You know, a good example might be um like at the at the end of the Harry Potter movies and books, there are a lot of characters who die. Yeah. Why?
02:18:26
Speaker
Why? Why? Except to make it like, oh, this was a big tragic battle and a lot of important people died and gave their lives for the battle. like yeah I guess. harry Harry Potter is a really good example because ah the emotional impact comes after the climax.
02:18:43
Speaker
So it's just the resolution of the story. So those emotions have nowhere to go. You're just like, oh, I'm sad because my favorite a Weasley twin died and now i just closed the book and now I am sad. Yeah. It's like, yeah. Very upsetting. Very upsetting. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry for those who haven't read Harry Potter. i um Spoil the ending. Spoilers. Yeah. It's all right.
02:19:07
Speaker
She's a transphobic. Spoilers. All your favorite people die at the end of Harry Potter. Exactly. Exactly. But like Mufasa dying is important to the plot. So it's good. That would be on Ahab's slides where it's well done and and important.
02:19:21
Speaker
Exactly. I myself am a big fan of um Kill People Because You Can.
02:19:29
Speaker
Just ah the chaos of it. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. See, this is why it were the the she's on the villain side eventually when she gets powers. I'm feeling vindicated once again. that i think I go back to it's got to fit one of two things, preferably both.
02:19:47
Speaker
Is it thematically... like solid that this like in line that this person yeah needs to die that like we need a death there or does mechanically for the plot their death further the plot even yeah even the second point but even simpler than that is just does the character's death advance the arc of another character um if so, likely can justify it. Although, and I would argue most of the time even there, it's a cheap justification. You could advance the plot better another way via other means, not just character death.
02:20:30
Speaker
That's what we're going to Oh, I'm so excited. Very cool. $1 a month. Patreon. $1 a month. Patreon company. There you go.
02:20:41
Speaker
Well, the only thing left is we do see that Teacher does reveal a bit more of his plan. He's cracked a hole into the Shard dimension, the space between worlds where Shards reside, which is Rain's dream world.
Teacher's Shard Dimension Plan and Legend's Potential
02:20:58
Speaker
Sveta's had dreams of it.
02:21:01
Speaker
Sveta says it's like what her power feels like when she lets go and ah Swan Song, or somebody's mentioned having dreams of it. um We also see at least teacher's justification for why he did what he did, which is he believes that the shards, although they've kind of lost their administrator, they are still trying to pursue their previous command, which is gather data, come to a head, blow up, and move on, right? We know that plan from when we had the Entities Interludes back in Wyrm.
02:21:38
Speaker
However, they've lost their navigator system, basically, so they're just doing it now without that central hub. Key is saying that whatever he was planning, we don't know exactly what that was, but whatever he was planning was ultimately for the good of all humanity to try to protect what was left.
02:21:59
Speaker
Contessa says... I don't really operate that way anymore. I'm not willing, I'm not willing to sacrifice the 999 to save the 1000. Like that doesn't, isn't her modus operandi anymore.
02:22:13
Speaker
Um, and then we also get the stress meter, which I thought was interesting of like every time a power is used anywhere on any earth, it kind of adds to the base level of,
02:22:27
Speaker
charge stress we'll call it i guess yeah and there is a tipping point where if it hits that 100 then something crazy is going to happen so now granted we're three quarters of the way through the story technically now we kind of have like a definable you know kind of like dina's end of the world prediction we have a definable thing that is predicted to be happening um and then teacher poofs out with legend so
02:22:57
Speaker
jesus there we go confirmed was option C in the end and legend does I don't think so but I couldn't remember does his power allow him to travel between dimensions or no no It allows you him to travel through space.
02:23:13
Speaker
Yeah, i knew the space part of it, but I couldn't remember if his like if his breaker form was multi-dimensional. Not that we know of. it it's a possibility It's a possibility that theoretically could happen in the future, but don't know. assume it was that third person who like bopped and bopped him out.
02:23:30
Speaker
yeah Yeah, right. yeah yeah yeah yeah And Legend was just fast. Quick boy. Yeah.
02:23:39
Speaker
yeah he I did like that one line about Legend where Teacher was like, Saint, I want you to pull out because you're going win. But not in the way that you think you're going to win. in the sense of like... like At first, it's like Saint's like, oh, you mean I could beat Legend? And Teacher's like, no.
02:23:57
Speaker
You're just going to corner him. And then he's going to destroy everything. Yeah, he's going to break everything to smithereens. So... Oh, it's great. yeah because Because, you know, he he could go full laser, I feel like. He just turns into a living laser and just blasts around everything.
02:24:13
Speaker
Yeah. Lasers are really interesting. Legend's definitely one of those. Like Narwhal, like Eidolon at the time, um you know, where you get the strong impression that they are way more powerful than we've seen them be. And it's only because of some, you know, hey, I've got to be the good guy and I can't just go around I live in a world made of cardboard.
02:24:38
Speaker
Yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly. Love it. Yeah. I mean, let's not forget. I bring it up because it's so cool. Legend's feat where he gets trapped in the Kronos sphere back in Worm and literally breaker forms through what we can only assume were millennia of time in order to break out of the Bones. Kansu sphere.
02:24:59
Speaker
but The Kansu, not Kronos. Yeah, Kansu. Thank you. Yeah. Um... Yeah, exactly. that that And then busts out. He comes out and his hair's like long and stuff. And he's like, I'll be honest, I kind of blacked out there. He didn't even know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:25:18
Speaker
but Exactly. He's great. Yeah. ah To Bernard's question, can you predict what happens when the powers overload and the ice breaks? Do you think the heroes in Dylan would stop using powers?
02:25:30
Speaker
Again, i'm i'm i'm kind of sticking with my prediction that this all goes belly up at some point and it kind of blows everything up. And we do perhaps end the story in a place where like maybe Valkyrie's the only only one left, you know, or something like that. With powers?
02:25:50
Speaker
Yeah, I would love an ending to this entire story because I I've been thinking about that a lot because I know obviously a lot of the a lot of the talk around Ward has been as not as not as good as worm, obviously. So in my mind, I'm like, well, the ending can't be that amazing or people would probably love it.
02:26:07
Speaker
we want We've talked about it. we want I need the Valkyrie ending where she gets all the shards back and just reforms ah Eden. yeah She just becomes the new... She becomes Eden and... Or Scion and just off to the next planet.
02:26:23
Speaker
And that's all it. I can see it. I can see it. It's great. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I don't really have any predictions to be perfectly honest. I...
02:26:36
Speaker
Because ah it's felt so scattered puzzle piece-wise, I really don't even know what to expect. I have absolutely no idea how this is going to go. Like, a with Wyrm, you could kind of foresee, like, Sion going bad. Like, he goes dark side. Like, yeah, I can see that happening. The man, the golden man? Yeah, okay, that could happen for sure. With this, I'm like, I don't fucking know what that looks like. Like, I i can guess, but, like...
02:27:02
Speaker
I guess ah potentially broken triggers to the absolute maximum of like tree people exploding power stuff everywhere. But if that happens, I can't, I don't know how to see an ending that,
02:27:17
Speaker
and then the cops just show up and arrest everybody. just like the east Police, we've tracked a large, but you know, like, you oh, you've got a shard infestation. yeah we like We've got a spray for that.
02:27:29
Speaker
yeah And it's just Galactus with a little spray wand spraying the planet. You know, don't worry, it'll permeate through all dimensions. It'll all be gone. It's a systemic. Those shards will be in six months.
02:27:42
Speaker
Exactly. its like Wild. All right. Well, um with ARC 15 wrapped up, that means in two weeks, if ARC 16, we will be reading be reading 16.1 16.7. Okay.
02:27:59
Speaker
Is that going be on the 11th of I believe...
02:28:07
Speaker
okay um right is that going to be on the eleventh of may yeah i believe That would be the 11th of May. Yes.
02:28:18
Speaker
Most excellent. May 11th. 16-1 through sixteen seven Beautiful. excited. I'm ready. I'm excited to see what happens next.
02:28:33
Speaker
I'm prepared to cry a lot. McKenzie. Always. Yeah. yeah right And for our bingo sheets, yes bingo we had Cat on Screen, Moral Debate on Plan ABC, Alan Rance, Offscreen Deaths Are Bullshit, Squick from Spawner, and Boring Interludes.
02:28:52
Speaker
What we did not have was Nick going full parent, mostly because he was disappeared from... kind of did it at the beginning. to be here I was with my kids at the beginning. They didn't know that. The is teacher right debate. Jacob is a saint Stan. Jacob is a cinephile. Nick is a teacher Stan.
02:29:09
Speaker
Someone doesn't understand what's happening. Hannah cries. Someone misses the Dark Knight Rises reference. Milk and one big yawn. Wait, what Dark Knight Rises reference? I did say at one point it's like a dog chasing cars.
02:29:24
Speaker
That too. That's the Dark Knight first off. No problem. It's the Bane Rises. Oh, the Dark Knight Rises. I thought you said the Dark Knight Reference. The Dark Knight Rises reference.
02:29:36
Speaker
Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. And it's when she she's down in Gru's thing and she goes, the darkness is my ally. And he goes, that's a terrible line. because you really yeah i did think about that. I thought it was kind of obvious, but yeah, I did think about it. I just didn't bring it up. I guess we'd...
02:29:53
Speaker
Ironically, we'd mentioned de Bain earlier in the podcast. Yes, we did. I was like, oh, y'all already prepped. You guys were in the middle of cooking about something else so I didn't want to interrupt and point it out.
02:30:06
Speaker
Michael, you gotta always interrupt us every time. It's hard didn't get a bingo either. I was so close. ah But... Next week, I'm sure we have lots of stuff. I would love to hear your bingos. Please guess us for next week as to what the hosts will be doing or saying or thinking.
02:30:23
Speaker
um appreciate you all so much being here. The best. Talking us through this We have done some Patreon content. It will be coming out at some point in time.
02:30:34
Speaker
And Jacob's PowerPoint now too. That'll happen. And Jacob's PowerPoint, which is required. Jacob, I think you could do that. I think you also need to do your ah your your movie bingo. The plot hole bingo again.
02:30:48
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Number one, because great Patreon content. Number two, because I've already forgotten. He's already forgotten the lessons. We'll do it. Also, I like what Fran just put in chat. Here's my ending. Everyone's dead. We zoom out. We reveal Taylor is reading a comic book. She puts it down and looks at Greg. She says, you suck at writing, dude. Oh, that's amazing. I it. amazing like I guess devastated. He triggers.
02:31:16
Speaker
no no I love it. a lo ah You guys are the best. Check your urethra bugs too.
02:31:27
Speaker
Around. Oh, Nick. No. Come on. Nick, I had forgotten. need to bring it back up. We're going to play a song. You ready? I'm ready. my gosh, what song? It's gone.
02:31:41
Speaker
It's gone. Join the Patreon. Please come on and join the Patreon. Why don't you just join the Patreon? Come support us and join the Patreon. Please help us and join the Patreon.
02:31:53
Speaker
We
02:31:58
Speaker
Why don't you just join the Patreon? Come on, come on. Daddy likes his fans, but Daddy loves his patrons. Hey. We appreciate all you patrons and chatters. We'll see you on the 11th with
02:32:16
Speaker
ARC 16, 1 through 7.
02:32:23
Speaker
with arc sixteen one through seven Heck yeah. Thanks for all the fun chats tonight and participating. All the best.
02:32:34
Speaker
Bye. Yeah.
02:32:53
Speaker
Join the Patreon. Why don't you just call it Patreon?